


Belladonna

by Apollymi



Category: Gundam Wing, Sailor Moon - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Amnesia, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Crossovers strike again, Multi, Novella, Sailor Moon Crossover, Threesome, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-28
Updated: 2012-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-13 02:42:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 59,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/498552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apollymi/pseuds/Apollymi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Heero's been having strange dreams. Duo's been experiencing some rather odd events as well. Does it have anything to do with a strange blonde girl who appeared from nowhere?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Conscious dreaming had never worked for him. No matter how many times he told himself that he was dreaming, that what he was seeing wasn't real, that he could wake up at any time, he never quite managed to do so. Not that he had all that much experience with this, since these... phenomena had just started a few months previously and it did not occur every night, but it went against the order he craved and strove to live his life by. Therefore, it needed to end immediately.

He knew he was dreaming. He could see it, as if he were outside of himself looking in, also not a sensation he was particularly pleased with. He just had to convince himself that it was nothing important and then he'd be able to wake up. It was just a dream, just an annoying, fantastic dream, with absolutely no bearing on the reality of his world. Yes, it was just a dream. A very weird dream, with a blonde angel - who seemed strangely familiar - and, even more oddly, Duo Maxwell - who he hadn't even seen in months! - and something that... 'felt' like the fate of the world hanging like the Sword of Damocles, on a thread over his head. The whole mess was all together too imprecise for him.

The dream world abruptly took on a dark, otherworldly feeling, like a place covered in pitch black mist. It was thick, making it hard to breathe. Each lungful of air was an effort to pull in. It felt like death, and that was a feeling he wasn't likely to ever forget. He'd been close enough to it several times over the years to know and remember the sensation - or rather, the lack thereof. If he were a superstitious person - not that he was, of course! Superstitions were for weak-minded idiots, after all! - he'd be inclined to think something was about to happen that could mean the deaths of them all.

 

_~~~~~~~~_

__

_Heero_

___~~~~~~~~___

 

 

There was an old adage from science that objects in motion tended to stay in motion. Not that he was all that boned up on physics. After two years of being thrown around a small cockpit at the whim of physics, which did not even begin to count training, he wanted nothing more to do with the stuff.

But if 'objects in motion tend to stay in motion with the same speed and the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force', what did that say about the odd things that had been going on lately? And more specifically, what did it say about him as an 'unbalanced force'? Indigo eyes tracked the object he'd chosen for this experiment, much to what would be Hilde's consternation if she ever found out. Of course, that would preclude her ever figuring out where her monkey wrench disappeared to and who had taken it. Hell, with any luck, she'd blame it on one of the many local gangs or her newest ex-boyfriend, and he could get away scot-free.

And to think: this whole little experiment in sheer blind confusion (and, he could admit, a bit of panic) had started with a simple overturned can of soda. Maybe one of these days, he'd be a glutton for punishment and share this little bit with his best friend... if he could track the bastard down again.

A hard push sent the tool spinning over the edge of the table, spiraling in circles towards the floor. A single thought stopped it, though, leaving the rust-faded tool rotating in midair as though it was caught in zero gravity, even here on Earth. It was a trick he'd done many times to amuse himself in the cockpit of his Gundam when in deep space; it definitely was  _not_  supposed to work where there  _was_  gravity.

So what the hell was going on? Physics didn't just stop being for some guy bored enough to try to spin tools in midair... did it?  
  


  
_  
_~~~~~~~~_ _

__

__Duo_ _

___~~~~~~~~___

 

 

She felt like the piñata her brother had had at his birthday party: battered, bruised, and generally tossed aside for the candy filling. She was fairly certain the last few hours' battle and its deadly toll had robbed her of any candy filling she might have been holding onto. She was alone, so very alone.

Everyone was returning home, and the world was slowly setting itself right. But it was taking so long, and she was so terribly alone. She liked to pretend to herself that she was strong, but no longer. Her supposed strength had faded with her friends' souls. All the hope she had held on to, that no one was truly gone until she gave up, was starting to recede, leaving her with the sole thought that her friends, her pseudo-family, was no more, that she had stood by and done nothing while they fell one-by-one to a foe she now felt she could have beaten had she even tried. Refusing to fight had won her nothing and only ended up costing her entirely too much.

Well, never again. Whatever happened from here on out, she wasn't going to lose anyone dear to her ever again. Of course, that meant there had to be someone dear to her again and right now she wasn't too sure there was anyone left in the world, much less her family or even Tokyo.

Such an enormous toll had been paid for the arrogance of thinking one person should be responsible for the fate of many. That's what it had been: arrogance, conceit, and folly. But next time, it would be different. Next time, the fate of everyone wouldn't rest on one person. Next time...

Was there really going to be a next time?

_Let there be a next time,_  was all she could think to pray as exhausted blue eyes slid shut.  _Let us be able to start again._ And with her eyes closed, she missed the silver light winking into existence before her.

 

_  
_~ _~~~~~~~__  
_

__

_Usagi_

 _

~~~~~~~~

_

 

And so it began.

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **First Draft:** 28 April 2006  
>  **Revisions:** 14 January 2009
> 
> And so ends the beginning of my first major foray back into the world of Sailormoon crossovers. I guess I didn't need to get rid of my old username after all. .;; (Just kidding! I like Apollymi!) This will not mark an end to my shounen-ai writing, but every so often, a writer needs some love (we're needy creatures) that I don't get with the Yuugiou.
> 
> As for the revisions, I am in the process of converting all my stories with Gundam Wing characters over to traditional spellings. So that means all my "Hiiro"s will become "Heero"s and all my "Ririna"s will become "Relena"s. For clarity's sake.
> 
> Anyway... thanks for reading!
> 
> -Apollymi  
> apollymi at gmail .com


	2. Chapter One

_The body in his arms is shaking. She can't be cold; even if he won't admit it, sweat is dripping from his every pore. Why else would a woman shake like this then?_

_His mind flashes back to a girl he knew once upon a time - and specifically silver drops of liquid sliding down her face slowly from her eyes as he pushed her away from him to safety on Libra. Funny, how long has it been since_ Relena _crossed his mind? She has been erased by a blonde angel - and that isn't necessarily a bad thing._

_"Are you crying?" he hears himself ask. He didn't want to ask that, but he has no control of the words coming from his mouth. It's like he's a spectator in the mutiny his body is performing._

_She nods, face still tilted down in her hands away from him. "Yes," she whispers softly._

_"Why?" he asks. This time his body agrees with his mind and does the same._

_"Duo..."_

_Something inside him goes cold at the single whispered word. "Duo?"_

"Yeah?"

 _What-? The word cuts through him like a knife of ice. The blonde girl shatters in his arms,_ and he looked up to see Duo Maxwell standing above him, looking down with something very much like concern clear on his face. That wasn't necessarily too distressing on its own, but when coupled with the fact he hadn't heard him or even realized he was in the room till he spoke, it became rather alarming. It was an effort, but he reined in his initial response - to punch the American in the face - and made himself ask, "What are you doing here?"

"Tracking you down, obviously." It was a bit of a relief that the concern had faded and been replaced with the more customary smirk he was used to seeing the other wear. "Do you have to pull a god damn Houdini every time you leave?"

That wasn't a question worth answering, since Duo asked it every time he managed to track him down again. Instead he slowly managed to drag himself out of bed, pretending to himself that he wasn't in the least bothered by the fact that it was actually difficult to do. In a different lifetime during the wars, he hadn't so much slept as he had catnapped to recharge the machine. Of course, he'd never dreamed back then either, so that might have made something of a difference. Now he couldn't seem to _stop_ dreaming.

A quiet Duo wasn't necessarily a good thing either, but it happened, more frequently than most people who knew the American were willing to bet. It did mean he was thinking about something way too seriously though, so just about anything could come out of his mouth at any minute. He would get around to what he wanted to say in a moment, and in the meanwhile, Heero made his way into the tiny en suite bathroom his current hotel room provided; maybe a little water on his face might bring him out of his daze.

Maybe he was just tired, but the next words out of his sometimes friend's mouth just confused him. "Has anything... strange been happening to you lately?" A single raised eyebrow sent through the open doorway conveyed his question as well as if he'd spoken it aloud. "Seriously, Heero, anything?"

"Define 'strange'." He groped behind him for the hand towel he knew was back there. His fingertips brushed it, and it slid off the rack. The housekeeping staff seemed to love doing stuff like this to him, he thought sourly, starting to reach for the smaller cloth next to where it had hung.

Midway to the floor, though, the larger towel's path turned, coming back up to land in his hand. In shock, he turned to look at Duo, who was sitting down hard on his sweat-soaked bed, elbows on his knees to support his head like it was too heavy to hold up any longer without help. He looked like he'd been run over by an entire legion of Mobile Suits and then they'd backed up. After a moment, he took a deep breath and looked up. "You know, just strange?" He even sounded tired, and _that_ was strange.

Well, there was no sense not using the towel after he went to all the trouble of retrieving it, so he dabbed the water off his face and tossed it at the other man. He was definitely out of his daze, that was for certain, but he didn't know whether to blame the water or the so-called God of Death's new trick, he mused to himself as he sat down at the small writing desk. "Nothing like that," he finally said.

Duo finished wiping the perspiration from his face and draped the small towel around his neck. "Like what then?"

He shook his head slightly, crossing his arms over his chest. The more he thought about all of this, the colder he felt. The whole thing was just too odd for his taste. He didn't like it, he didn't like to even think about it. But it looked like Duo was going to try to wait him out, sit there in silence till he said what was on his mind. "It's really nothing like... what you did," he finally stated quietly. "I've just... started dreaming."

There was quiet for a moment, then Duo prompted, "You haven't dreamed before?" He shook his head silently; he'd never had a dream that he could recall before a few months back. The human body couldn't function without dreaming, but he had never remembered one or had one so vivid before. "What have you been dreaming?"

At least Duo wasn't treating him like he was crazy or anything, not that he'd really been expecting it from the other man. "Mostly it's a girl, not Relena," he clarified quickly. "I've never seen her before. I'd definitely remember someone like her."

Duo nodded. "You said mostly. What else?"

This certainly felt more familiar: the American prying a conversation from him a bit at the time. "It's weird. It's so weird sometimes I don't think it's real, like I've finally gone crazy."

"You're not nuts, Heero." Well, that was a bit of a relief to hear, even coming from someone who still called himself the God of Death. "Tell me."

"I dream these things... then they happen." It was probably a good thing Duo could read lips as well he himself could, because he barely even heard himself talking.

There was silence, broken only by him shifting in his chair, for a long moment before the American man finally managed to speak again. "Holy shit." And that summed it up pretty well, but far be it from Duo to leave it there. "Heero, you're talking ESP here."

"More like clairvoyance." He raised an eyebrow again. "And what you just showed off is remarkably like psychokinesis."

"You did your research." And he didn't sound a bit surprised and much more impressed. Anyone who knew him should know he'd have started finding as much about what was going on as he could. "Then again, it _is_ you we're talking about here. Of course you did your research. So what's your theory? Where did all this come from?"

"..." Sitting in silence was a fair bit better than admitting that he had no idea.

Thankfully Duo was every bit as good at reading his silences as he was at reading lips, and the American heaved a dark sigh and rubbed his head like it was killing him. He'd done that as long as Heero had known him, mostly when something was frustrating him. "What about these dreams of yours? Anything there?"

He shot the other what he hoped was the most irritated look in his arsenal, not that it mattered much to Duo; as always, he shrugged it right off and silently waited for his answer. He could try waiting the American out, but that might take years. The God of Death was an appropriate _nom de guerre_ for his sometimes friend; he certainly could be as patient as his namesake. Finally with a sigh, he relented. "There is that... person." He bit his lip. "At least, I think she's a person. Something about her always seems to make me think 'angel', though."

He halfway expected Duo to make fun of him as he trailed off. He should have known better. "In the classical sense or more emotionally?" came the next prompt.

"There are two me's in the dreams she shows up in. The one that's interacting with her and the one that's observing everything, even if that me can still hear the other me's thoughts. The one that's with her thinks of her as an angel, but I'm not sure what he - I - he means by it.."

"But you think she's important." It wasn't a question, but he still nodded his agreement. "Then we just have to find her. Shouldn't be too hard, even if all we have is a description."

"I've tried. It's like she doesn't exist. I've checked everywhere I can think of, even death records for the last hundred years."

"Is the search still set up on your laptop?" He nodded slightly, half glancing over his shoulder to where it was sitting on the table behind him. "Then I'll see what I can turn up. Go take a shower; you stink, man. OZ would have smelled you coming a mile away. Did you run a marathon in your sleep or what?"

If it were anyone but Duo, he thought to himself in wry amusement as he headed back into the bathroom, they would have lost their tongue for the cheek and their fingers for even thinking of touching his laptop. Of course, it was Duo. He was his first - and thus far, only - friend. He counted the other pilots as comrades; none of them had put the time into tracking him down repeatedly (nor did they likely have the time) and the work into befriending him, drawing him out of his shell. And if the downside of that was that he occasionally had to give up solitary possession of his laptop and put up with the American's overabundant attitude, he could live with that too.

Showering was a quick and easy process that lasted precisely four minutes and thirty seconds, and it was only that long because he'd taken the time to clean his hair rather than listen to another Shinigami rant about him not taking care of himself. Of course now it would just be a much shorter rant about him using the low quality shampoo the hotel had provided. It was a novel experience, though, having someone worrying over his well-being. He certainly wasn't going to pass it up.

He found the largest towel he had (not that it was very big at all) and anchored it around his waist before stepping back into the main room. "Anything?"

Duo was staring at the screen like it had done a trick of some sort, but when he spoke, the American turned to look at him and quickly recovered his voice, in typical Duo abundance. "Shit, Heero, did you even wait for the water to get hot? This is why you need a keeper: you refuse to take care of yourself. Cold showers aren't that great," he paused to wink salaciously, "unless you really just needed one - and if that's the case, down, boy. I'm-"

"Did you find anything?" He tried to sound annoyed. It would encourage Duo way too much if he gave into the urge to laugh (or worse yet, agree) with one of his little flirtations. It wasn't like he meant it anyway; why would someone like Duo want someone like him? Why would anyone?

"I think so. Is this your mystery angel?" He moved so Heero could look also.

He leaned against the back of the chair, just short of resting his hand on Duo's shoulder but close enough that he could feel the other's warmth through the long-sleeved shirt he'd worn today. On the screen was a low-resolution photo of a blonde girl, her hair set in pigtails with bobs at the top. Blue eyes glittered happily even in the old image, and he had to wonder what she was looking at to amuse her so. She was in her mid-teens by his best guess, maybe fifteen or sixteen, yet there was an innocence about her. "That's her," he whispered. "Where'd you find her?"

Duo shrugged nonchalantly. "I just finished the search you had going." The American poked his side lightly, and he twitched as slender fingers unerringly found his ribs. "That's all you gave me time for. Have you been eating since you went and vanished on me?"

"Of course. So who is she?"

With a few clicks of the touchpad, Duo pulled up an abbreviated profile. "Usagi Tsukino, from Tokyo, Japan, here on Earth. Age sixteen, father, mother, younger brother, absolutely nothing interesting there."

"Then why were you looking at the screen like you were shocked?"

Duo let out a tired sigh, rubbing at his forehead briefly before clicking another button. "Because she's listed as a missing person, from way back when, well before we changed the dating system. Heero, she vanished in the late twentieth century. Your mystery angel would be at least fifteen hundred years old."

His knees suddenly felt like they were about to give out under his weight, and he sat down hard on the edge of the bed. "That's impossible. It's absolutely impossible." He scowled as he realized his voice was shaking ever so slightly.

Duo turned the chair so that it faced him and was closer to where he'd collapsed. "How is it impossible, Heero?" His voice was low and soothing. When he was quiet, his friend leaned forward to place a hand on his knee. "What is it?"

"In one of the dreams, I saw her talking to Relena."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **First Draft:** 03 June 2006  
>  **Revision:** 14 January 2009
> 
> Sorry for the delay in getting this chapter out. I'll try to be faster with the next one.
> 
> As for the revisions, I am in the process of converting all my stories with Gundam Wing characters over to traditional spellings. So that means all my "Hiiro"s will become "Heero"s and all my "Ririna"s will become "Relena"s. For clarity's sake.


	3. Chapter Two

It was refreshing to have a friend who didn't see her for her money or her power and position, even if she was a bit odd, Relena thought to herself with a faint smile. Oh, her bodyguards, currently on loan from the Preventers, were none too keen on the idea of the Vice-Foreign Minister bringing home some amnesiac war orphan she'd met glad-handing at a hospital on Earth in her latest goodwill mission, but she didn't really care. Usagi was the one of first real friends she'd had in what seemed like forever, since Heero vanished two years ago once he was recovered from the Mariemeia Incident.

Heero hadn't been on her mind much except in the periphery as of late, she recalled in amusement - at least not until Duo called to wake her up late - very late - last night (And she wasn't going to ask how he'd gotten the number to the personal, unlisted line in her bedroom. One just didn't ask Duo those kinds of questions; the answers tended to be a bit on the alarming side and generally tended to make her glad they were friends.) and let her know that he and Heero were on their way here.

She had to stifle another smile. It was good to know at least one person was able to track down the Japanese man and stay by his side. She worried about her friend a lot less than she might otherwise have since Duo was so frequently with him. One of these days, though, she'd like to see them when it didn't involve herself and/or the Earth Sphere and the colonies being in danger. A friendly visit would be a welcome change.

In the years that she'd know them, though, she'd never heard worry in Duo's voice like she'd heard on the phone. She'd always assumed that he didn't let things worry him, that he just acted on what was bothering him and moved past it. Or, at least as she'd come to learn, that's how he was when what was bothering him didn't directly affect Heero as well, at which point all bets were off. She could relate, since the same held true for her with her few friends, Heero especially. He deserved the rest of his life to be without worry or war. She would do anything and everything in her power to make sure that happened, and it reassured her to know that Duo would do the same - and probably more since he wasn't quite as bound by legality as she was.

Usagi was making that list as well, though, short though it might be. For not having a memory to speak of, the blonde's blue eyes reminded her of Heero's: world-weary, tired, sad, the eyes of someone who had seen too much and had no need or want to talk about it ever again. At least Usagi didn't remember what had happened, whatever it was. How she wished she could say the same for Heero. That was one of many wishes for her friend she had, though, and she didn't foresee any of them coming true.

"Relena-san?" She started at the sound of Usagi's voice. The girl had an absolute talent for sneaking around. She glanced up to see the blonde standing in the doorway to her home office, a worried look in her blue eyes. "Are you all right?"

Her friend did always seem to have a way of knowing when something was bothering her. It was uncanny, since they'd only known each other a few weeks. "I'm fine, Usagi. I'm just worried about Heero and Duo getting here okay in this weather." She looked over her shoulder at the torrents of rain pouring down outside the house.

"It is looking pretty nasty out there." As if to punctuate her words, a bolt of lightning shot down, close enough to hear the pop inside. "Your friends shouldn't be out there in this mess."

She frowned in worry, turning all her attention to the weather beyond the window. "No, they shouldn't. I wish they were here already."

At her side, Usagi stiffened, just briefly, like she tended to do when anyone started a sentence like that. Usually Relena was careful to avoid saying those words, mindful of the way they seemed to make her friend uncomfortable - but also equally mindful of the fact that whatever was 'wished' for around the younger girl had an alarming tendency to come true. This time, though, she couldn't have avoided it if she'd wanted to: she _would_ prefer Heero and Duo to be here already.

As if on cue, the ringing of the front doorbell echoed through the large house, loud enough to startle her from her reverie. Usagi looked a little pale and the wan smile on her face seemed pasted on, but she was making the attempt to be cheerful. "What do you want to bet that's your friends?"

Given what she'd witnessed over the last few weeks, that two of the former Gundam pilots were at the door was a pretty strong chance. So in answer, she just smiled and headed out of the room, dimly aware of Usagi following her.

* * *

Relena looked... good, he supposed. It wasn't like he hadn't seen her in the two years since the Mariemeia Incident, but her television appearances hadn't really show how she was. She'd cut her hair a bit but otherwise looked much the same as the last time he'd seen her. That was... good as well, he supposed.

He just wasn't too sure why he was here. He'd told Duo about seeing that girl, the so-called angel, near Relena, dating her at a point they could investigate - and somehow within a day, they'd ended up on the road to the Vice-Foreign Minister's estate. They'd driven through the night, making good time till they hit this storm and had been forced to slow down. Then somehow they'd gotten from the highway to the estate in the blink of an eye. It didn't seem like something Duo should be able to do, even with this odd new ability of his, so that left a whole new set of possibilities that he didn't really want to consider too heavily just yet.

Duo had both their bookbags, one slung over each of his shoulders, wordlessly acknowledging something he'd never verbally told his friend: that weather like this made his whole right arm and shoulder ache in remembered pain of the abuse it had taken two years ago. Not that Duo hadn't taken his own fair share of beatings in the wars, but if it bothered the American, he never gave any sign of it. "Hi there, Princess," he greeted Relena with an easy smile. Even he couldn't tell if the other man was faking it or not, and he liked to think he could read Duo fairly well. "How've you been?"

The smile she returned was a lot easier to read: she was genuinely glad to see them. "I've been well, thank you. What about you?"

Duo shrugged. "Same old, same old."

Sometimes Duo amazed him. How could he just be standing there making small talk after what had just happened? Wasn't he at all curious about how they'd come to be here so suddenly? For the moment, he continued to bite his tongue. Who knew? Maybe Duo was leading up to it. Or was this one of those 'being polite' things he'd never quite mastered?

A quiet shuffle of noise, barely loud enough for even him to notice, drew his attention to the open door behind Relena. Less than a moment later, a familiar face, framed by long blonde hair, peered around the door. Blue eyes, a shade or two brighter than his own, glanced at him then Duo briefly before locking onto Relena's back. It was just as well she hadn't said anything; he was pretty sure the breath had been shocked out of him: it was the angel, the same girl he'd been seeing in his dreams.

The quiet around him was what drew him back out of his surprise. Apparently Relena had asked him something, and when he didn't respond, they'd both turned to see what was distracting him. Duo was following his gaze - and he looked a little pale himself. She was the same girl they'd tracked down, the one from the past, the same age and exact identical appearance to her photograph online; a little shock was certainly allowed in extenuating circumstances like this.

Relena was smiling though, seemingly oblivious to the surprise on their faces, and took a few steps back to grasp the girl's hand lightly in her own. "Heero, Duo, I would like you to meet my new friend, Usagi. Usagi, _this_ is Heero and Duo."

She smiled very faintly and sketched an even fainter bow, an archaic gesture that seemed so out of place, yet... "I'm very pleased to meet you."

And for just a moment, all he could think was _'I'm not going crazy - she_ is _real'_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **First Draft:** 14 February 2007  
>  **Revision:** 14 January 2009
> 
> Yay! At long last, a new chapter of Belladonna. You have no idea how much it's been bugging me that this wasn't ready for others to read. So I sat myself down and made myself finish today. So, Happy Single's Awareness Day, everyone. Thanks for the read.
> 
> As for the revisions, I am in the process of converting all my stories with Gundam Wing characters over to traditional spellings. So that means all my "Hiiro"s will become "Heero"s and all my "Ririna"s will become "Relena"s. For clarity's sake.
> 
> Apollymi


	4. Chapter Three

_'I'm not going crazy - she is real.'_

The mere thought was a relief. Despite Duo's reassurances, he'd had his doubts that his nebulous claim on sanity was still valid. After all, sanity and Duo Maxwell were barely acquainted, much less close friends, for the other man to tell if Heero himself was sane. The past few days had seemed like a hallucination - or maybe a really weird, somewhat bad dream - but at least he hadn't lost his mind. That was also a relief.

And he was staring. Apparently only Duo had noticed it so far, if the concerned expression on his friend's face was any indication, but he might want to knock it off before it got him in more trouble than it already had.

Duo's hand brushed his, and it was both a question ("Are you all right?") and a prompt ("Say something."), neither of which he could really ignore. Like he could ignore the American for very long anyway... "Pleased to meet you," he finally choked out, half-remembered manners lessons asserting themselves.

He felt more than heard Duo heave out a heavy sigh. When he half-glanced over out of the corner of his eye, though, a huge smile - almost definitely fake, as much as Duo ever lied about anything - was plastered across his face. The sigh probably came from his proving yet again that he had the social skills of a Mobile Doll, and the smile most likely meant Duo was about to take matters into his own hands. A gregarious "And so am I," complete with a half-step forward and friendly extended hand, confirmed his theory. Sometimes predicting Duo wasn't as hard as it may at first seem, if one knew the man as long as he had. "Duo Maxwell."

That smile was designed, he'd long decided, to put people on their ease. It seemed to be doing its job in spades on Relena's new friend. A faint flush stained her cheeks, and a nervous grin covered her lips - and somehow the thought occurred that this might be how he looked when Duo flirted with him. "M-my name's Usagi." Her expression grew into a thousand kilowatt smile that threatened to bowl him over.

Somehow, in some deep, hidden part of himself, maybe even perhaps the part responsible for these dreams, something told him he was in trouble if - no, _when_ , it provided - they ever ganged up on him.

* * *

"I've missed you, Heero."

He was only half-listening to whatever Relena was talking about. It was late, it had been a strange day, he was tired - and he was accepting that as why he felt like his mind was straying into unfamiliar territory. It was stupid to worry about his partner now, with the wars over, but he was far from comfortable with this strange new situation they'd found themselves caught in. And Duo was alone in the next room with the so-called angel he'd been seeing his dreams as of late. At least Duo could defend himself if the situation ended up calling for it - and at least he lacked Quatre's odd qualms about hitting a female. If something happened, Duo was much better equipped to handle it than Relena and her bodyguards, Preventers though they might be. There was really no reason at all to worry. None whatsoever. So why was he still... concerned?

"Heero?"

At the faint distress he could pick up in Relena's voice, he redirected his attentions back from his tired thoughts to the Vice-Foreign Minister. "What?"

"Have you heard a word I said?" Time spent around Duo allowed him to hear the teasing in her voice when only a year ago he would have taken her words literally, and so he waited till she decided to continue speaking. "It just seems strange, all these odd things happening lately."

This time alarms went off in his mind, and for a long second, all he could think was _'Nothing more weird. Please, no more weird. The last thing either Duo or I need is more weird.'_ "What kind of odd things?"

"See? I knew you weren't listening." But she was smiling and continuing to speak without any further joking. "It's strange - I know I keep saying that, but it's the best word for the situation. In the last few weeks, things have been happening. Really, really odd things, and they've all been since I brought Usagi home."

In the last few weeks? So, perhaps, right around the same time he'd started dreaming and Duo had started moving things with his mind? "Relena, what exactly has been happening?" To his own ears, his voice sounded nervous, maybe even stressed; something gave him the distinct feeling that he sounded absolutely normal to anyone listening.

She glanced to the side, staring out the window at the storm still raging beyond the glass. "It's hard to put into words. Things... _happen_ around Usagi, things that I can't explain. Like earlier, I was worried about the two of you out there in this mess, and I accidentally said that I wished you were here already, and then you were here. People keep making these idle wishes around her - and they keep coming true!" She'd begun her words calmly and rationally enough, but by the end, she was nearly shrieking, like it was all catching up with her. Finally she took a deep breath and began again. "Usagi is a dear friend, but Heero, this is just unnerving."

Suddenly he had the very distinct wish that he was with Duo and the so-called angel, Usagi. He had no idea what to say to his friend right now. What did one normally say in situations like this? Not 'situations like this' with the odd occurrences of course, but 'situations like this' with an upset friend. Surely there had to be something. "Duo and I will figure out what's going on. That's why we came here." Maybe that would be good enough for now.

"You heard about all this?" Well, at least it was good enough to distract her from the previous topic.

He shrugged and hedged out a "We knew something was going on here." It was close enough to the truth that even Duo might have said it..

"It couldn't have just been a social visit, could it?" There was uncharacteristic bitterness in her voice, not a lot, but enough to snag his attention, enough to make him notice it. "You can't come to see me unless there's trouble. I wish-"

He wasn't too sure on the range of this Usagi's abilities - if that was indeed what they were, since they matched the description of nothing he'd ever heard of before, even with all the research he'd been doing the last few weeks - but it was better to be safe than sorry, especially in a case like this. He leaned forward quickly and put a silencing hand over her mouth. Less than a second later, her hand covered his, apparently reaching the same conclusion, if the wide-eyed panic on her face was any indication. "You probably shouldn't do that, Relena, if wishes _do_ tend to come true around this girl."

She nodded enthusiastically and drew their hands away from her mouth before speaking. "I know, Heero. Believe me, I know." She sighed. "But it's like that story, with the monkey's paw. You just have to keep making wishes, and so few of them turn out right. I might have just as easily accidentally wished you and Duo to Siberia as to here." She was still a bit hysterical then, but maybe she'd wind down soon. He didn't think shaking her till she snapped out of it would go over well. "I'm afraid I won't be able to stop myself from wishing one of these days. Do you-"

Abruptly she cut herself off, and he frowned. "Do I what?"

She was hesitantly silent for several long minutes. "Is there any way you and Duo can take her with you when you leave again?" At least she accepted that they were leaving this time. There wouldn't be a scene as there might have been years ago. But what was she thinking with this? "It's not fair of me to use Usagi like this. It's not fair of me to ask you to do what I can't either, but there's not way around it that I can see. If anyone can resist this, it's you, Heero."

The faith she had in him was touching and it worked into their plans ideally, maybe better than he'd dared hope, but...

* * *

So maybe the Heero in the dreams _his_ Heero kept having had the right idea, thinking of this girl as an angel. She certainly fit the classical definition of one, as well as having the temperament generally assigned to celestial beings. She was all smiles and honest joy, though something told him it was at least in part due to having someone other than just Relena pay attention to her.

If there was an evil bone in her body, he'd give up flirting with Heero for a month. Okay, no, not a month. Maybe a week. Two days might be a more believable span, but still... Okay, maybe she wasn't bad, just going on a gut feeling, but that didn't mean her talent - or whatever about her had grabbed the attention of Heero's abilities - wasn't dangerous. It also didn't mean that people couldn't use her for their own purposes, if she had a talent or not; even he could see just how potent a figurehead she could be, maybe even more so than Relena. She was beautiful, radiated purity - and best of all, she had no idea who she was. The possibilities were, well, in a word, sickening.

And on a completely different note, he didn't think he knew anyone, male or female, who blushed as prettily. Heero might flush more often and more easily, and he adored that about the man, but he'd yet to make it look nearly this adorable. Even better, no matter what he may say that might turn her face whatever shade of red, she had ready either a quick rejoinder or a smiling laugh.

He had no way of know what - if anything - Relena might have told her about the war, since it was easy to tell she didn't remember it ( _'Was she even in this century for it?'_ , his mind questioned, and right now, he had no answer). Therefore, he made sure not to mention it directly, but instead work his stories around it, maybe embellishing things here and there to make for a better story, but let it not be said that he'd lied to make a pretty girl laugh, because he hadn't. Enough time spent trying to coax a smile out of his taciturn partner had made spinning war stories more humorously easier, and getting Usagi to laugh at the discovery of a decapitated and stripped-bare Shinigami was definitely an amusing prospect for him as well.

How were they going to breach the subject of her coming with them - or at least sticking with them long enough to figure out what about her was so important to these dreams Heero kept having - was going to be an interesting thing to figure out. History wasn't exactly his strongest subject, but he was pretty sure even people in the late twentieth century weren't trusting enough to go off with a couple of strangers, even if they were friends of a friend of hers. And kidnapping wasn't a good idea: for one, it had been years since he'd had to kidnap someone, so he might be a bit rusty; and for a second, there was always the possibility that her abilities - if she indeed _had_ any, and this wasn't just some fluke... not that Heero had flukes - might be hazardous to his continued lifespan.

It was somewhat telling that, as the door opened to readmit a somber-looking Heero and Relena, Usagi's laughter took a moment to peter out: she was self-conscious, at least a bit, then. And the smile faded from her face as the silence stretched. Of course, then again, he could feel his own doing the same.

Relena finally broke the tableau with a heavy sigh. "Usagi, we need to talk."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **First Draft:** 13 May 2007  
>  **Revision:** 14 January 2009
> 
> Wow, that took a lot longer than I was hoping it would. Sorry for the delay! I'll try to do better with the next chapter!
> 
> As for the revisions, I am in the process of converting all my stories with Gundam Wing characters over to traditional spellings. So that means all my "Hiiro"s will become "Heero"s and all my "Ririna"s will become "Relena"s. For clarity's sake.


	5. Chapter Four

_It's happening again._

_He's dreaming._

_He knows he's dreaming, but there is nothing he can do to stop it. No matter what he tells himself or what he tries, he can't make himself wake up._

_The blonde angel - Usagi, as he now knows - stands before the version of himself in the dream. Stubborn determination iss written all over her face and reflects in her wet eyes what is probably showing in his own. "We have to do something, Heero. We have to get him back."_

_Get him back? Get who back?_

_No, wait, he knows this. He recognizes the background, remembers the feeling of sweat pouring off him. For crying out loud, she is even wearing the same dress as the previous dream. Weird... All of the other dreams have been disjointed and out of sequence. This is the first one to come with a sense of order in time. But if it was in order, then..._

_"We'll get Duo back," he hears himself saying._

_He isn't going to try to make sense of the complex and varied emotions running rampant through the dream version of himself, but foremost, there are worry and a sense of affectionate regard for both his partner and this girl. He can understand that: he has long harbored feelings for his friend that no amount of friendly - but no doubt teasing only - flirting have jarred loose. He also felt an immediate... something to the blonde girl from the moment he laid eyes on her, both in these dreams and in real life. He has no hope, however, that either of them will ever feel anything for him._

_But the other him is still speaking, though, so he makes himself listen. "If they've so much as harmed him, I'll..."_

_"You're not the only one."_

_The version of him that is watching all of this can't help but be shocked at hearing that from Usagi. The girl he just met doesn't seem capable of such fierce emotions. If anyone can inspire them in a person, though, it would definitely be Duo. Just look at what the other man has done to him, after all._

_Why are they so concerned about Duo anyway? It isn't like the American can't take care of himself. It sounds like someone somehow had him. If they can hold him is something else altogether. Whatever this is, it sounds bad, really bad._

_"We'll get him back," he hears himself repeating. Listening to himself speak, he has to wonder if he is trying to convince himself or Usagi._

_"I know." She sounds so damn sure of it that he's very tempted to revise his previous thought: it certainly doesn't sound as if she needs reassuring. "We have one major advantage here, as I see it."_

_"What's that?" His voice sounds oddly flat to his own ears. It goes rather nicely along with the empty, hollow feeling in his chest; he isn't sure which version of himself it belongs to, but it might be both._

_"You dreamed about this, remember?"_

He awoke with a start, leaping forward to sit stark upright in bed. Somehow, he was utterly unsurprised to find his fist shoved in his mouth to silence himself, as well as his body wrapped in sweat-soaked sheets. It wasn't the first time that that had happened, after all. After the third or fourth time, it had ceased to be any source of shock to him.

He uncovered his mouth and took a deep breath to try to cleanse his mind. Sadly, it didn't seem to be working this time. That same feeling of doom still pulled at the back of his mind ominously. More than that, the feeling that something was coming for them specifically bothered him much more than he wanted to admit. If someone was gunning for him alone, that would have been one thing, but going after Duo, his only friend, was something else altogether.

Maybe that was why he had the disconcerting urge to go check and make sure the other man was all right, if only to reassure himself. It was worth a shot anyway. What was the worst that could happen?

 _'Duo wakes up, catches you sneaking into his room like some sort of pervert, and blows you away - or worse, abandons you,'_ his mind quickly supplied.

Well, there was no way he was getting back to sleep, not after a dream like that, until he knew for sure. Decision made, he threw off the damp sheets, drew back on the jeans and shirt he had been wearing earlier in the day, and stepped out into the hallway on silent bare feet. Relena had been thoughtful enough to put his room next to his partner's, so it wouldn't be too hard to do this.

Outside, the same storm was still raging. The cracking thunder covered the quiet sound of him opening the other's door. Duo was sprawled across the bed; between his hair and long limbs, he nearly covered every centimeter of it. He had known that the America was exhausted, between his newfound abilities, the long drive, and the meet-and-greet, so he wasn't too surprised when there was little movement from his friend aside from the rise and fall of his breathing. That was enough, though.

Reassured, he turned and pulled the door closed again as soon as it thundered again. Damn, how pathetic was he now? It disturbed him that he had stooped to this: sneaking around to make sure that his partner was there and breathing. What was next, he thought snidely, shaking his head in a vain attempt to clear it.

With a disgusted sigh, he turned to head back to his room - and froze when he spotted the open door across the hall and the bright blue eyes staring back at him from it. Words seemed to completely abandon him in a rush, so it was just as well she spoke first, a tremulous smile on her face. "Is everything okay? Are you all right, Heero-san?"

He was none too sure he would have ever been able to ask that had he been in her position. From what little Relena had told him, the girl didn't remember a thing from her past (presumably even how she got here), she managed to make a single friend in Relena, and now that friend was dumping her off on two people she didn't even know. Yet here she was, asking one of said strangers if he was okay.

"I'm fine. I-" He didn't want to admit to being terrified by a stupid dream. He wasn't even sure if he should tell her about the dreams yet. It might have been a bit wiser to keep that information strictly between him and Duo for now. So instead, he just went with the first thing that came out. "I couldn't sleep, I suppose."

She nodded sagely. "Me neither." Lightning popped, thunder crashed again, sounding closer than ever this time - and Usagi jumped, color abruptly leaving her face. "I hate storms."

What was there he could say to that? Ordinarily, he would have just walked back into his bedroom without bothering, self-assigned mission accomplished. This time, he felt compelled to make at least some sort of comment. The best he could come up with was a rather lame "It'll be okay." He paused, a voice in his head very much like Duo's prompting him to say something else. "It should blow over by tomorrow." Not a lot better, but it beat saying nothing at all.

"I hope so." She smiled briefly and self-deprecatingly. "You're probably tired, Heero-san. I'll let you go back to sleep - or try to anyway. How early are we leaving tomorrow, out of curiosity?"

If it were just Duo and him, there was a good possibility they would have been gone before dawn. As tired as Duo seemed to be, though, that probably wouldn't be the best way to go. Plus there was every chance Relena would want to say goodbye to all of them. "After breakfast, probably," he decided.

She nodded again slowly. "All right. It gives me time to pack, I guess." A small frown crossed her face. "Are you sure you're okay, Heero-san?"

She wasn't looking him in the eye, he noticed. Instead, her gaze was fixed on his right shoulder. He glanced down to see that he was unconsciously rubbing it. This kind of weather really did play havoc on his body. "Just sore. The weather."

"I'm sorry."

Great, someone else to confuse the hell out of him. Apparently, it wasn't enough for Duo to do that on a regular basis. "Why?"

She shrugged slightly. "Because it hurt. Good night, Heero-san." The door closed quietly behind her, and he could only stare at the wood in confusion. "What just happened here?"

* * *

The storm had yet to die off by 0600, Heero noted with a frown. Peeking between the curtains in his room, all he could surmise was that it had instead gotten worse. This would probably delay their plans for leaving a bit. Relena was none too likely to want them to leave in weather like this - and frankly, he was none too sure he wanted to be driving in it or having Duo drive in it. In short...

"It looks pretty damn miserable out there."

He started slightly at the sound of Duo's voice behind him, in the doorway to his room. Glancing over his shoulder, he noted the other was already dressed as well, even if he had obviously not gotten around to buttoning up the overshirt he was wearing over a tight white t-shirt. Even better than that, he held two steaming mugs. He could smell the American's coffee from here, not as amazing as it sounded when he remembered that Quatre had once debated the merits of trying to use Duo's coffee to replace fuel in some of his shuttles. "Coffee?" he asked quietly.

Duo grinned. "Only for me. I know you don't like the stuff. It looks like the Princess was hoping for a visit sometime soon. She had your favorite green tea in stock." The other joined him at the window, passing over his drink, and frowned at the scene outside. "We're definitely not getting out of here anytime soon in this mess. I wouldn't even trust Shinigami in this crap, let alone a car. It'd be like asking to end up dead in a ditch."

He nodded his agreement, taking a careful sip of his tea. There was really no point in burning himself with it, after all. He let a moment pass in a sort of comfortable silence before he asked one of the questions foremost in his mind. "What do you think of her?"

"Hmm? Usagi, you mean?" He nodded, pretending he was too busy with his tea to answer aloud. Duo probably knew better, but he still answered anyway. "Well, I definitely see where you got the whole angel thing. All she lacks are the wings and halo. I've never heard of an ability like what Relena told you she has, at least not outside Arabic mythology. A _djinn_ , to be exact," he paused then clarified at the look of confusion he was obviously displaying, "or a genie. Granting wishes and all that. Although..."

As the American trailed off, he found himself prompting him to continue. "Although what?"

"Do you know if someone tried to make a wish while I was talking with Usagi alone yesterday afternoon?"

He nodded slowly. "Yeah, Relena almost did, but she caught herself before she could. Why?"

"I can't guess too much on the timing or anything, but for a few seconds there, her eyes started glowing this weird shade of silver. It only lasted no more than five seconds, but I know I saw it. It was pretty startling to see. So, Heero," he changed the subject deftly, "any idea of what we're going to do once we're out of here?"

A couple of ideas rushed through his mind, and he found himself struggling to hold back a flush. He did _not_ need to be entertaining such notions. There was no way either of would ever be interested in someone like him, especially not like _that_. The very idea was just preposterous. "We need to find out what the limits are to what it is we can do. We need to figure out how Usagi-san got here and why. And we need to figure out what this 'doom' is that keeps showing up in my dreams."

"I think I like whatever it was you were thinking of first a lot better," Duo commented with a sly smile. "It looked a lot more fun."

"What looked like a lot of fun?"

Of course, Usagi would have chosen right then to show up. Now, granted from the circles under her eyes, there was every possibility that she'd been up all night. If she hated storms as badly as she said - and as badly as she had acted like she did in the dead of the night last night - then that was probably the truth. After all, she didn't seem like the kind to want to get up early on a regular basis, though what gave him that impression, he didn't know; it could have been the yawning, however.

There was no way Duo was going to pass up a golden chance like this for teasing him. He knew that, but really, there was no way of bracing for it. "It had to have been _something_ good, for as red as he went." The other man grinned and chuckled almost to himself. "I doubt he'll ever kiss and tell, though."

Duo definitely had that one right: there was no way, even upon threat of torture or death, that he was going to give up the images that had gone through his mind. It was just too embarrassing. Instead, it was probably a much better idea to deflect some of the attention off himself, so he turned to Usagi and commented, "I wasn't expecting to see you up so early this morning."

Okay, that was a bit of a lame attempt, based on the way Duo smirked and rolled his eyes, but at least she ran with it. "I don't think I ever got to sleep. I really, really hate storms."

The other man glanced at the sheets of rain pouring down on the other side of the glass then back to her. "I must have been more exhausted than I realized. I didn't even notice this keeping up all night. If it does let up, though, we'll still need to get on the road pretty quick." He paused, taking a sip of his coffee. It was only because he knew Duo so well that he was able to realize he was weighting the possibilities of what to say next for maximum effect. "I mean, if that's all right by you and you're ready to leave, Miss Tsukino."

She shrugged. "I packed last night. There was nothing else... to do... Tsukino?" she trailed off to ask, utter confusion written all over her face. Even more telling, it shone from her eyes as well. "Is that my name?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **13 January 2009**
> 
> Okay, I am literally ashamed of myself for how long it took me to get this chapter out. However, I haven't been completely useless: In the intervening time, I've written two novels; I am 90 percent done with a third one; I've started a few other fan fiction titles; I've worked a 40 hour job; and I've started taking graduate school. I have indeed been a busy lady.
> 
> Speaking of the novels, the first one should be out in print sometime this February, while the second one should be around August this year. I don't have a date for the third one yet, since I'm still working on it.
> 
> I will say, though, that I don't anticipate Chapter Five being so long a wait. You see, I have Belladonna in the same notebook with my classwork, so I can't forget to scribble on it.
> 
> Lots of love to everyone!  
> Apollymi


	6. Chapter Five

"Tsukino? Is that my name?" Usagi hesitated as she asked, her voice little more than whisper.

Somewhere in the back of his trained mind, he was busy assessing her reaction: the shock and confusion seemed genuine, complete with appropriate pupil dilation. If it was an act, it was a damned good one, but he somehow didn't think it was one. There was no point in not being too careful, however. It had kept them alive so far, after all.

Duo was still running with it though. "From little we've been able to come up with, your name is Usagi Tsukino."

"Tsukino Usagi," he heard himself correcting. "The family name would be first."

She was nodding at his addition. "That... sounds... right, I guess. Maybe... I don't know! I can't remember!"

There was something about the way she said that that made alarms go off in his mind. For once, though, they weren't warning him of danger. No, this time they were letting him know about Usagi - and namely, that trying to remember was actually causing her physical pain.

He started to let Duo know, but apparently, the other man had already picked up on it as well. He set his coffee cup down on a small table next to the window and crossed the room to gently set his hand on her shoulder. "It's okay. Don't try to push it. Forcing it won't make your memories come back any faster."

"Really?" He could hear a faint kind of hope kindling in the woman's voice. It sounded shaky at best, like the least little thing could dash it to pieces.

"Yeah," Duo continued. "It's like when you're trying to think of something: the harder you try, the harder it is to remember." He offered her a familiar smile, one he knew he had seen turned on him in some of his most down moments. "Or at least, that's how it is for me. Probably not Heero here. I swear he has a supercomputer for a brain or something. He never forgets anything. It's pretty amazing."

"Really?" she asked once again. This time, it was totally different, though. She sounded amused, and there was an almost conspiratorial twinkle in her eyes. "Now, that I'd like to see."

Oh, now this was just great. All the attention was back on him again. Apparently, his thought yesterday about when them teamed up on him hadn't been too far off base. He certainly felt a bit bowled over at the two of them grinning at him like that, not to mention perhaps a little nervous. Yeah, nerves were a good explanation for the odd feeling inside him.

"And what about you, Duo-kun?" she continued, much to his surprise. "What is it that you're... pretty amazing at?"

It only took Duo a second or two to recover if the segue had caught him off guard. "I could always show you."

Amazingly, she laughed at that, a surprisingly happy sound that seemed to light up the room. "Oh, I just bet you could, couldn't you?"

"Absolutely. And didn't I say yesterday to just call me Duo?"

Usagi seemed to be trying to act serious, but the grin threatening to spill over her lips almost ruined the image. "Duo-chan..."

He couldn't help it: a laugh spilled out of him unexpectedly. And here he had been thinking only Duo could make him do that. The indigent look on Duo's face only made the whole thing all the more amusing, and Usagi's laughter certainly wasn't helping.

"I'm missing something in translation here, aren't I?" Duo complained. He didn't seem too put out, though; it obviously didn't bother him as much as he was pretending that it did. In fact, he actually seemed a bit amused. "Go on. Laugh it up at the poor guy who doesn't speak the language then."

"Remind me explain honorifics sometime," he found himself commenting between fading chuckles. Not right now, though: maybe in the car where there should be fewer chances for retaliation, in theory anyway. For now, though, this was good. He could get used to it. He wasn't going to let himself, however.

As Usagi's laughter petered out as well, he noticed something that he would be embarrassed to admit he hadn't picked up on till then: the silence outside. He couldn't hear the thunder anymore, and the sound of the torrents of rain beating against the window had ceased. So far as he could tell, it looked like the storm was over, that it had just quit in an instant. If he had to make a comparison, he would say that it was as if the bad weather had just been shut off like a light switch.

That was miles outside anything he could do. He was pretty sure that it was beyond the scope of anything Duo could do as well. Of the few people with these talents - that he knew of anyway - the only one with the possibility of being able to do something like this was the woman standing next to Duo, a happy smile still on her face. Apparently, pleasing her could literally light up a room then.

So had the storm been a side-effect of how... sad she had been? If it was, then it was a lousy side-effect when she was so afraid of storms.

"The rain's stopped," he commented blandly. There was no way he was going to bring this up just yet. Maybe if and when he got Duo alone again, he'd air the idea, but not now. After all, most of this stuff was still new to him: he might be wrong.

* * *

Getting off from Relena's was turning out to be a lot easier than either of them had anticipated. Once the three of them went downstairs, the other woman was waiting for them at the dining table, a wide array of breakfast items laid out before her.

"I know you probably want to get on the road as soon as possible and take advantage of this break in the weather," she commented, "but sit down and eat something first. I know Usagi at least least is usually pretty miserable without food."

He glanced to the side at the pair standing next to him. Yep, Usagi was indeed blushing slightly in embarrassment, and Heero seemed to be making a mental note on that. The blonde was tiny - he might have even used "slight" to describe her - but somehow it wouldn't surprise him if she ate a lot. He'd noted that both he and Heero had started eating more to compensate for the extra energy burned by these... talents.

No, what was alarming was how much food on her plate once she got over her brief embarrassment. He tried to think back to dinner late last night to recall if she had eaten even a third this much, but unfortunately, he had been too exhausted to take note. At the time, the majority of his tiny bit of remaining attention had been split between two things: not passing out at his plate and making sure Heero was all right. The Japanese man would never admit, even to him, when he was in pain, so he made it a point to keep an extra close eye on him, at least when he could find him. Sometimes, though, he half-suspected Heero let him find him, not that he was ever going to ask.

From what little he did recall about last night, this meal seemed to be its near opposite. He remembered Usagi being sullenly withdrawn after Relena's announcement, but now she was animated and lively. Heero was even allowing himself to be drawn into reluctant conversation, mostly by the Japanese blonde. That in and of itself should count as a miracle. Heero was not exactly the social type unless it was for a mission (not that that had been a concern in years, thankfully). He wasn't one for protracted talks either, so it was doubly surprising.

But it was definitely a good thing.

* * *

_Great. Just great. It seems he's dreaming yet again.  
_

_He wanted to catch a quick nap before it's his turn to drive a bit, since he didn't slept well after the previous dream. Instead, though, he's dreaming, so his sleep will definitely be anything but restful._

_"Damn," he hears Duo mutter at his side. Have they managed to get him back? Is this what came after all the other dreams?_

_"What?" he hears his own voice quietly inquire._

_Duo lifts a hand from the steering wheel to rub at his head as if it pains him. "We were making good time till we hit all this construction. It's going to set us back on our time."_

_"Do we need to be somewhere at a certain time?" Usagi's voice asks from behind him. The version of him in the dream seems a bit surprised to hear her. Why, he had to wonder._

_"Nah, not really," Duo answers, turning in his seat to talk to her. With traffic at an utter standstill, it isn't nearly as worrisome as it might otherwise be. "I had called ahead and ordered us a couple of hotel rooms, but at this rate, I doubt we'll make our reservations. It's not a big deal."_

_The version of him in the dream just barely sees her nodding out of the corner of his eye. "I can understand that, as long as it won't be a hassle. Umm... Heero-san?"_

_"What?" Oddly, both versions of him are asking the same single word question - but in utterly opposite ways. He's a bit concerned and perhaps even a tad alarmed at the worry in her voice. The him in the dream is distracted, barely hearing her inquiry. How odd._

_"Are you okay? You look like something's bothering you." She definitely does sound worried, as odd as that might have been for someone to worry over him - aside from Duo and Relena, anyway. "Can I do anything to help?"_

_And isn't that very much like her? Just from what he gathered last night, she might be more soft-hearted than Relena and Quatre combined._

_He feels himself shake his head slightly. "No, I'm all right." It wasn't entirely a lie. Duo doesn't seem to believe that in the least, though, based on the look in his eyes and the warm hand on his leg. No, wait, there are two hands touching him: the other is much smaller and rests on his shoulder. Usagi's expression has changed little; if anything, she looks even more concerned than she had before. "It's just-"_

He jumped awake, banging his knees on the car's dashboard. For a brief panicked moment, his eyes cast around desperately trying to place himself in the correct location and time. The clock on the car's radio told him that he'd only been asleep about thirty or forty minutes. As for the where, that was a bit easier.

By mutual decision, they had let Usagi have the car's rather small backseat so that maybe she could get some of the sleep she hadn't last night; she had seemed utterly exhausted. Because he'd gotten the most rest of them all, Duo had insisted on taking the first shift driving, as well as insisting that he try to get some shuteye as well. He vaguely remembered drifting off. What he didn't remember was shifting over to use Duo's shoulder as a pillow.

"Sorry," he whispered, sitting up sharply. "I didn't mean t0-"

"Don't worry about it," Duo returned as quietly. He turned a smirk and a wink at him quickly. "I've been enjoying it myself."

He felt his face heating and mentally cursed that he blushed so easily. He knew it was just Duo kidding around, and there was no way he meant it seriously - even with the fact he hadn't seen Duo flirt with anyone else but him until this morning with Usagi.

Usagi... Now that was a thought. What would she say in response to a statement like that?

"I bet you did." At best, it was weak, and at worst didn't bear thinking about. He did, however, note that he seemed to have surprised Duo: his head whipped back around to stare at him, eyes wide with undisguised shock.

It only took him a moment to recover himself, though, in his usual abundance. "And if that doesn't do it for you, I can always think of several other things I'd enjoy doing with you."

A smile threatened to break out, and he wasn't too sure how well he managed to hide it. "I'll have to take a rain check this time."

The other man nodded sagely. "You're right. The front seat of a car is no place for what I have in mind. Too crowded, not enough room to properly maneuver."

He was pretty sure his face was probably red enough to explode, but he somehow managed to get out a weak retort of sorts. "Probably not."

Duo chuckled quietly and didn't add anything else. It was probably just as well; if it was possible to actually die of embarrassment, he might have.

Waiting for his face to cool, he turned to stare out the window and think. While he was certain Duo didn't mean anything with his teasing, sometimes he almost wished the other did. No, scratch that "almost" and the "sometimes" too: he did wish Duo might care about him as more than a friend.

At least, he presumed that was how Duo treated him: it certainly wasn't like he'd had a multitude of close companions prior to the wars. He could, however, admit to being a bit puzzled at the feelings he'd experienced when the other man had been flirting with Usagi earlier this morning: amused, unnerved, confused, and maybe... jealous?

No, it would be better to concentrate on the dream. Compared to most of the others, it seemed strange. There was no sense of doom or dread to it at all. There had been one or two at the beginning that had been like that, but all the other had had the same oppressive air to them. This one had just been a normal everyday conversation, not important at all.

He barely noticed the car beginning to slow, but Duo's muttered "Damn" at his side did grab his attention.

He turned quickly to face the other man. "What?" he returned as quietly as the car finally stopped.

The American raised a hand from the steering wheel to rub at his head like it was hurting him. It was a habit he'd know him to use when something was bothering or annoying him. "We were making good time till we hit all this construction. It's going to set us back on our time."

"Do we need to be somewhere at a certain time?" Usagi's voice behind him was startling. He had assumed she was still asleep. It had certainly looked like she was drifting off about the same time he had. How long had she been awake - and how long had she been listening?!

If that bothered Duo, he didn't let it show. "Nah, not really," he answered, turning in his seat to talk to her. "I had called ahead and ordered us a couple of hotel rooms, but at this rate, I doubt we'll make our reservations. It's not a big deal."

Why did all this seem so familiar?

Usagi nodded; he barely noted it out of the corner of his eye. "I can understand that," she commented, "as long as it won't be a hassle. Umm... Heero-san?"

"What?" Something about all this didn't sit quite right, and trying to figure out what that was had him completely distracted.

"Are you okay? You look like something's bothering you. Can I do anything to help?"

"No, I'm all right," he answered, shaking his head slightly, in response to obvious worry.

Duo didn't seem to believe that in the least, though, based on the look in his eyes and... the warm hand on his leg? Wait... No there were two hands touching him: the other was smaller and rested on his shoulder. Usagi looked more concerned now than she had before.

It was their hands touching him that cinched it, though. It was the dream. This was the dream. It didn't make sense - he had never had one happen so quickly before, after all - but that was exactly what this was. No wonder it had been bothering him so badly. But just to be sure, he asked, "It's just... We haven't had this conversation before, have we?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **21 January 2009**
> 
> Finally, a decent turnaround time! I'm hoping I can repeat this for Chapter Six. I wish I could do a decent length author's note, but I'm about to run out the door right after I get this posted, so I'm going to have to keep it short and sweet.
> 
> See everyone in the next chapter!
> 
> Lots of love to everyone!  
> Apollymi


	7. Chapter Six

Duo was pacing.

At least, that was his definition of the tightly lapped circles the other was doing on the thin carpet of the hotel room they had managed to turn up. It was a far cry from the plush, spacious rooms staying with Relena had afforded them, but it was far from the worst place he and his partner had ever stayed. How Usagi, over in the adjoining room, felt was something he didn't know, but he had yet to hear a complaint out of her, so he was counting that as a technical point in their favor.

"You're sure?" Duo finally broke off pacing to ask.

He nodded slowly and definitively. "Absolutely. Usually the dream takes several hours, if not days or longer, to happen. It's never happened in just a few minutes like this before."

For a long moment, he debated on telling Duo about some of his other dreams, the ones where the American was missing. There was no point in making an already tense situation even worse, though. And this situation was plenty tense enough without adding something like _that_ to it. Adding a match to hydraulic fuel seemed an apt comparison, given Hurricane Duo's occasionally explosive temper and newfound ability.

"So, why then would it change?" Duo was saying. He was pretty sure that it was a rhetorical question, so he kept silent and let the other man try to think. "There would have to be some kind of reason for this kind of change, a catalyst of some sort."

Something different and probably newly added... "Usagi-san. That's the only thing different exception location. And I've been on the move since this started, so I doubt that's it." It was the only thing that made sense, yet at the same time, it was worrying to even consider. How could one person—

"How could she be doing this?" Duo echoed his thought aloud. "I'm not saying I doubt your theory or anything, Heero. I just don't see how it makes sense."

"It could be that she's doing it unconsciously," he offered.

"It'd almost have to be." Duo sounded frazzled, frustrated even. He hesitated for a long second that felt an eternity long then reached out to put his hand on the other's arm. For what it was worth, the American calmed quickly and sounded a bit closer to his usual self when he spoke again. "I mean, can you imagine her doing anything even remotely spiteful?"

His imagination certainly wasn't the best, excluding its recent forays into pornographic imagery, but all in all... "Not really, no." He started to lower his hand, but instead the other man caught it, turning it to place a brief kiss on his palm, before letting it go. Flustered and surely a bit red, he managed to choke out a somewhat breathy "Duo?"

"Thanks," the other replied softly. "I guess I sort of needed that."

He was refusing to meet indigo eyes that were no doubt staring at him. Instead, he fixed his attention on the various small objects around the room that were a few subtle centimeters off where they had been only moments ago. The complimentary coffee pt that had awaited them in the room, for instance, sat a scant breath away from toppling over onto the bathroom floor.

Keeping his eyes fixed on the precariously settled combination of glass and plastic, he quietly returned, "It's no problem. It's not as if I did anything really to help out." No, all he had done had been to overcome years of conditioned behavior not to touch anyone unless he meant to hurt or kill them. One minor miracle at the time...

Outside the room, thunder suddenly crashed loudly. A half-second later, he heard a deluge of water suddenly start pouring down.

"I thought the forecast was calling for an utter lack of rain for the next week," he commented in confusion. While weather reports were rarely on the dot, they usually managed to get the basics right: rain or no rain, at least for the day they were reporting on.

"This sounds awfully familiar, like the rain we just left at Relena's place," Duo stated blandly, "rain that was in the forecast..."

"But started up anyway," he continued the thought. He took a deep breath before finishing out his no-doubt crackpot theory. "And stopped again the minute you cheered up Usagi-san."

Duo let out a heavy, overly dramatic sigh of relief and then grinned broadly. "I'm glad I wasn't the only one thinking that. It all keeps seeming too weird to be true, doesn't it?" Without hesitation, he nodded once in agreement. "And then it keeps on happening anyway. So what could be causing it now, do you suppose?"

Thunder pealed loudly outside twice before he answered slowly, "I'd imagine it'd have to be her somehow." He wasn't at all clear on the 'how's here, but he was pretty sure his 'who' was accurate at least. Lightning lit the entire room bright as day, and he frowned hard. "Why, though?"

The thunder popped loudly once more, followed by another bright flash of lightning – and then darkness. Every bit of electronics in the room went out all at once.

From the area he roughly recalled Duo standing at, the other man sighed again – and this time, he just sounded tired. "The lightning must have killed the power. Of course. Just perfect."

He vaguely recalled tossing his bag on the bed closest to the door. He eased his way over to it wordlessly, going through it completely by touch, until he felt exactly what he was looking for.

The single beam of light was startling bright in the pitch darkness, but it at least let him place where everything was in the room, including Duo. Apparently, the American had claimed a seat on top of the low dresser they had both previously been leaning against. An amused smirk covered his face in the harsh light. "Always come prepared for anything, eh, Heero?"

He shrugged nonchalantly. "Like you aren't?"

If anything, the grin only grew. "I never said that. But instead of a flashlight, I've got a pretty nice lighter Hilde found me."

He found himself frowning at that, not that that was a huge change for him. Even so, he tried to sound as casual as possible when he asked, "Should we go see what the problem is? Aside from the obvious downside of her finding out that we know..."

"Plus the slightly less obvious danger of invading a woman's bedroom. That can definitely be dangerous."

"And how would you know?" he found himself demanding before he could stop himself and winced.

"And you're jealous," Duo immediately teased.

"No, I'm—"

A noise that seemed a lot like a muffled scream came through the wall behind Duo, the wall that led to Usagi's adjoining room. The other man was on his feet and they were both at the door almost faster than he could process.

The lock on their side seem to be stuck, he decided when Duo stepped away cursing. He was about to try his own strength against it when it snapped over to the unlocked position completely on its own. Okay, maybe that new talent of Duo's had some really practical purposes that he hadn't considered before. Now was not the time, though.

He tapped on the remaining door between the rooms and asked, "Usagi-san? Are you all right?" Privately, he was a little surprised at two things: that he sounded so calm and that he had automatically started off in their shared native language.

"Y— Yes, I'm okay," she shakily returned in kind.

Behind him, he could hear Duo mutter something along the lines of "First chance I get, I'm learning the damn language."

It did actually seem a little rude to be holding an entire conversation in a language one person here didn't know. Switching back to English, he translated quietly, "She says she's all right."

Duo pointedly glanced back in the direction of the windows, beyond which the strange storm was still raging, and then back at him. "Something tells me otherwise."

That was the truth: if Usagi was as all right as she claimed to be – and their theory about the weather was indeed correct – then it should have cleared up by now. "Agreed," he finally returned. Unspoken, though, was the question of what they were supposed to do about it.

Duo, on the other hand, seemed to already have an idea in mind, though. Stepping up to stand next to him at the door, he spoke up just loudly enough to be heard by all of them. "You don't sound very 'all right', Usagi." He paused, but there was silence from the other side of the door. "Do you want one of us to come over there?"

She remained quiet for several long moments, long enough that he was about to decide she wasn't going to answer. He was also starting to think that the noise of the storm outside might have covered it if she had.

The sound of the other door unlocking, though, seemed to be louder than the thunder outside. The lightning lit up both rooms, showing her wide eyes that seemed impossibly blue in the brilliant light. "Please" was all she said, though, stepping aside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **25 June 2012**
> 
>  
> 
> I've had this chapter sitting in reserve for over three years, mostly due to a lack of interest. Not on my own part, because I adore this story, but due to a lack of hits and reviews. I'm planning on finishing it during JulNoWriMo 2012, though, so I'm posting what's in reserve.


	8. Chapter Seven

He wasn't too sure what to expect the next morning. To be fair, he felt somewhat awkward already, and he was the only one awake yet. In and of itself, though, that was not too unusual: he was frequently awake before Duo, and Usagi didn't seem the type to be up early. In fact, she had somehow seemed more the opposite, but that was just an initial impression.

Then again, he had only really woken up because he was too warm. It had set off warning bells in his unconscious mind, dragging him from his surprisingly pleasant dreams. That, by itself, was fairly odd. It was unusual. If it wasn't the dreams of doom to come, then it was memories coming back to visit him, few of which were pleasant enough to recall.

The last thing he was able to clearly recall from the night before was Usagi holding open the door for them to join her in her room. He vaguely recalled the three of them talking - Duo and Usagi more so than him, of course - though he couldn't exactly remember what was said, just that it was friendly and congenial. That may not have been exactly the right phrase, but at least there hadn't been yelling or anything.

Of course, the conversation had included a highly sanitized version of their roles in the wars, if he was recalling correctly. He seemed to remember her talking about what she had come to know since she had woken up with no memory.

It really should have bothered him a lot more than it was to not have a clear and exact recalling of last night. He was still waiting for the frustration and annoyance to rise, because it wasn't here yet. If nothing else, he was more bemused than anything - and that was unusual too.

But no, he definitely had woken up because he was too hot. He had a vague recollection that, when they first had started talking, he had been sitting on the edge of the bed closest to the outside door. He was certain of that: it was a habit he had held onto the strongest from before, making sure he had a clear path to an exit.

Somehow, though, right now he was finding himself to be stuck between the two of them, between Duo and Usagi. No wonder he had woken up hot: the pair of them together made quite the furnace. He couldn't exactly say he was complaining, not without lying - and that was something he tried to avoid where he could, thanks to Duo and his often repeated wartime motto - but there was no way this wasn't going to end up going badly, probably for him.

Still, he was going to enjoy it while it lasted, not that he saw where he had too many other options. There wasn't really any good way to get out from between the two of them, as wrapped around him as they were, without hurting one of them to get free. He wasn't about to do that, not in this lifetime, not if he could help it. Duo had an arm wrapped around his chest, pulling the American in close to his side, and a leg tossed carelessly over his own; apparently, in sleep, Duo resembled nothing more than a particularly clingy octopus. Usagi had tucked herself neatly into his other side, though her blonde hair had apparently escaped its odd hairstyle during the night and was threatening to take over the rest of the bed. The pair's hair was going to be an issue if the three of them kept this up.

The three of them? Who was he kidding? He didn't foresee this... arrangement lasting much beyond one of them waking up, much less going further into the future than that. He didn't need any kind of abilities or dreams of the future to see that. It just wasn't going to happen. It wasn't going to last, so yes, he might as well enjoy the feeling while it lasted, for however long it lasted. An hour?

Maybe less. He didn't think he had moved all that much, but at his side, he could feel Usagi starting to stir. He probably had a few moments' leeway there; she hadn't seemed like the type to wake up quickly. As for Duo, it wasn't so much a stirring as a minute change in his breathing that was almost impossible to put into words; it wasn't anything most people would have noticed, but he had known Duo a long time and these were instincts that had been trained into them, either by the wars or their lives before them.

So he wasn't too surprised to hear a quiet "Hey" from one side only a minute or two after hearing Duo wake up, the word barely louder than their breathing.

"Hey," he offered back.

"Guess we passed out in here."

Any second now, Duo was going to either tell some kind of a joke and leave or start yelling at him for enjoying this way too much and leave or…or… His mind, never overly creative to begin with, refused to provide him with an alternative worse than or even equal to Duo leaving him.

It might have been just as well, though, since Duo seemed to be perfectly content to settle back into his pillow. "At least the storm finally stopped," he commented around a large yawn. "That's a good thing: means Usagi's happy. So we don't have to worry about her freaking out or anything." Duo yawned again before turning dark indigo eyes on him. "Or are you handling the freaking out enough for all of us, Heero?"

"What?" It was probably a testament to how much of his training he'd held onto that his voice was completely level while the rest was indeed freaking out.

The smile Duo aimed his way was small and perhaps a little sad and sheepish. "Give me some credit: I think, after this long, I know you well enough to tell when something is bothering you. Right now, something is, and _this_ ," he gestured with one hand to the room at large and the bed the three of them were sharing in particular, "is the best bet for what it could be right now." Duo tried the grin again, with no better luck than before. "So are you going to start freaking out on me—on _us_?"

Maybe it was the intimate atmosphere, but he actually couldn't help the choked sound that escaped him, no more than he could stop himself from whispering, "You don't mean that, Duo."

"Let me be the judge of what I do and don't mean. What do you think I don't mean, anyway?" The other man's voice was calm, perhaps even coaxing, and maybe that was why he was able to give voice to the words he had once silently sworn to keep only to himself.

"You don't mean 'us,' Duo, not with someone like me." He spoke so softly that even he could barely hear his own words. Maybe Duo wouldn't be able to at all, but he somehow didn't think that would be the case, given the heavy silence of the room. "The things I've done…"

"My hands aren't exactly clean either, you know, Heero," Duo commented. "As for 'someone like you'… I would love to be an 'us' with someone like you."

"He's not the only one," a tired voice put in from behind him. And now his humiliation was complete. "I'll second that."

Usagi looked exhausted, concerned, and wrecked—but both compassion (or pity, he thought deprecatingly) and something else, something he had only ever seen previously from Duo, warmed her eyes.

As wonderful as hearing all of this was, as absolutely heavenly as the situation held the possibility of being, there was just no way he could wrap his mind around this being for real. Never in his life had anything this good ever turned out to be real, and the thought of having and losing this hurt worse than any physical injury in his life ever had. So instead of agreeing to the thing he wanted most, he shook his head and doggedly persisted, "You don't mean that, either of you."

From one side, he could hear Duo heave a heavy sigh, full of disappointment that tore at Heero's heart. From his other side, Usagi let out a less than ladylike harrumph of annoyance, even going so far as to cross her arms over her chest and pout. The completely overdone expression on her face startled a laugh out of Duo, and she responded in turn with a grin of her own.

As if by some unspoken arrangement, the two of them allowed their eyes to meet over Heero. A huge conversation seemed to pass silently between them in mere seconds, before they exchanged nods and tight, determined grins. Finally, Duo leaned over to drop a quick, utterly chaste, and yet completely mind-blowing kiss on his lips. "I guess we'll just have to change your mind then, Heero."

He could already feel himself beginning another automatic denial when Usagi copied Duo: kissing him briefly then leaning back with a confident grin. "Don't underestimate us, Heero-kun."

"And don't pretend you know what we want either." Duo sounded every bit as resolute as Usagi looked, but he didn't dare risk looking at the other man. Not now.

"We see something different when we look at you," Usagi slowly offered, "than you see when you look in the mirror."

* * *

Frankly, Duo couldn't think of a single other time—or even if one had ever occurred—where Heero had beat a retreat quite that fast in all the time he had known the man. It may have only been to the bathroom to claim first shower, but it was a quick withdrawal nonetheless. When Heero got back, though, he was going to make sure not to mention it again. It would be for the best all around, after all.

Somehow, he even got the feeling he wouldn't have to say anything to Usagi on the matter to keep her silent as well. He got the feeling she wasn't the kind of person to bring something up just to embarrass someone. Truth be told, he like that about her, quite a bit in fact. His first loyalty was to Heero, though, and…

"Duo-kun?"

Her voice pulled him out of his thoughts and back to the present. And they were still sitting on opposite sides of the king-sized bed that had originally been hers. Well, if she wasn't saying anything about it, he wasn't going to either. "Yeah?" he answered.

"I hope I'm not stepping on your toes or anything with Heero-kun." It seemed she was having a hard time saying what she was trying to, and so she was focusing on where her hands were clenched around the white sheet instead. "I don't want to push in where I'm not wanted or needed or anything. I heard some of what you two were saying in the car yesterday, and…"She trailed off, shrugging helplessly.

"Heero and I aren't together, Usagi," he stated plainly. No matter that…

"But you want the two of you to be together." Okay, now that was weird: her finishing his thought like that. "I just… I like you both very much, even if I haven't known either of you very long. If you're not interested in me…" she shifted awkwardly, clearly embarrassed, her grip on the sheets tightening, but she pressed on anyway, "or in girls in general, I'll back—"

"Usagi?" he cut into the ramble before it got truly out of hand. "I can't—and I'm not going to try to—speak for Heero here, but I'm… flexible." And it _was_ easier to say stuff like this when you weren't meeting the eyes of the person you were talking to. He took a second to be certain he could still hear Heero in the shower then continued. "I've loved Heero for a long time, though, even if he doesn't notice it."

Bright blue eyes flashed up to meet his, wide with something he couldn't—didn't dare—put a name to. "No, Duo-kun, that's not right. I think it's not that he doesn't notice but that he doesn't believe."

And that… made sense. It tallied with everything he knew about Heero, what he had be able to glean over the years, however measly the amount of information might be. He found himself nodding in agreement. "That sounds like Heero."

Speaking of Heero, this was an abnormally long time for him to be in the shower. Usually it was less than five minutes, but this morning was pushing seven so far. Duo would give it another five or so, but then he was going to go check on the other man. Regardless, they needed to be winding down this particular thread of conversation.

"Would you like me to back off, Duo-kun?" While she was clearly still embarrassed, Usagi was now determinedly meeting his eyes.

He gave it all of half a minute's thought before he made up his mind. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he found he had already done so, but the realization was perhaps a little bit surprising to him. After all these years of pursuing Heero, albeit in slow motion, it was especially a bit of a shock.

"Don't you dare back off, Usagi," he found himself saying with a wink. On a whim, he leaned across the bed to lightly kiss her cheek. "It's going to take both of us to lure Heero out of his shell."

The smile she sent him could have lit up a room and was just the faintest bit mischievous. "You're on, Duo-kun."

As the water finally cut off, the thought occurred to Duo that Heero was going to have no idea what hit him.

* * *

It looked like his earlier premonition was correct, Heero thought to himself bemusedly: when the two of them teamed up on him, he was going to have no chance whatsoever. He had come out of the restroom from his shower, taking care to get dressed while in there, and the pair of them was still sitting on the bed talking, thick as thieves.

He had done some quick picking up while Duo and Usagi were showering, Duo in the room that had started off as theirs and Usagi in the one that had been hers, the same shower he had used, which he was resolutely _not_ thinking about, instead focusing on this task.

Keeping all traces of himself in the room to a bare minimum was still an ingrained habit, though perhaps he was just fastidious by nature—something that would prove much needed with those two—but at least he had finally trained himself out of the habit of wiping down for fingerprints. It just no longer seemed necessary.

The water shut off in first one shower then the other, and a few minutes later, they both emerged. To some private surprise, both had left their long hair down to try. He had entertained more than a few private fantasies regarding Duo's hair over the years; now it looked like he might have to expand on them.

Usagi took a seat on a corner of the bed, rubbing a towel vigorously through her hair to dry it. "Are we staying here a while, or are we planning on heading out some time soon?"

Duo was already working on braiding his hair, even with it still wet. "We only paid for the one night. I don't think we have any actual plans, though—or at least I don't. Heero?"

He managed a shrug. "No plans here." Surprisingly, he even managed to sound nonchalant about it. He did not give voice to his preference to stay on the move until he knew for a fact they were safe. Duo already knew about it, after all, and had probably taken that information into account already.

"So why don't we head out of here, but then find a place to hole up in the next town we stop in?" Duo offered as he tied off his braid with a dark-colored hair band.

Usagi offered a grin. "Works by me. Just give me ten minutes to pack and maybe five to pull my hair up, and I'll be ready."

A tiny, rebellious part of him almost volunteered to help out. Then again, his part was already taken care of, so maybe he could watch, if nothing else… if Usagi didn't think him too much of a pervert for it. Then again, after this morning…

He had no idea where he stood with either of them, but he was hoping he would get to enjoy finding out… if that feeling of doom, so recently returned, didn't interfere in any way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **01 July 2012**
> 
> I put off posting this until I had the chapter following it completed. Sorry for the delay.


	9. Chapter Eight

_Sweat drips into his eyes, and he wipes at it absently from his brow. Why does it always seem to be so hot in these dreams? What is the significance of that? Or is there one? Is it just hot where the dreams of doom are taking place?_

_Usagi looks angry but determined. In fact, she looks mad enough to cause some serious damage, and he would not like to be on her bad side. Not right now. It doesn't look like something a person would be walking away from. Blue eyes flash furiously, but at least it's easy to tell, when she turns to him, her ire is not also directed his way. Tears still cling to the edges of her eyes, but somehow it doesn't make her seem sad, only more livid._

" _When you dreamed about this, Heero," she asks, though her tone actually makes him want to stand at attention, "what did you see? Was there anything we can use to get Duo back?"_

_He shakes his head sadly. "I didn't see who took him. I never saw what happened." He can somehow tell that the other him, the one speaking with Usagi, wants to add that he tried. He tried to see what was going to happen, but that particular vision stayed stubbornly away. Admitting something like that would be hard, maybe too hard, though, so both version of him keep their mouths shut on the matter. It feels too much like failure._

_A warm hand touches his face, stroking lightly down his cheek until he meets her eyes. "You tried, Heero. That's what matters. We'll just have to figure it out on our own."_

" _We_ will _find him," he hears himself say. Yet again, he has to wonder if he's trying to convince himself or Usagi of his fact._

_She nods in easy agreement, still gently tracing her fingers against his cheeks. It's amazing how clearly he can feel that sensation even against the skin of the dream version of him. "We will," she agrees, "and whoever took him will regret it. We'll make sure of it."_

" _Duo is probably already making them regret it." It could have come out as a bad attempt at a joke, but he means it completely seriously. Duo was trained as a Gundam pilot the same as he was, and before that, Heero gathered that he lived first on the streets then an orphanage; he probably knew even more ways to get away anyone that was trying to hold him than anyone else in the World Sphere._

_Grabbing Duo is a decision he isn't too sure he can wrap his mind around. He is fairly sure it had something to do with these new abilities they had mysteriously gained, but why Duo? If they wanted a power, Usagi's or even his would be more useful in the long run. The ability to grant wishes or to see the future would be of more use than Duo's telekinesis. So why did they take Duo? Why not grab him?_

_It should have been him._

" _Heero…" Usagi's voice is stern, and he can't help but glance up guiltily at her. "Don't blame yourself. It's no one's fault but the bastards who took Duo. And we're going to make them pay for it. Remember that, Heero. It's the bastards' fault."_

_He should be shocked to hear Usagi swear. But it's very much like how he was surprised that she was capable of such fierceness: if anyone could inspire such a thing, it would be Duo. He has no doubts about that. Just look at the levels Duo inspired him to reach…_

" _I'll keep that in mind," he promises. It's not like promising to not blame himself. That's not a promise he would be able to keep right now._

_No matter what is said, no matter what he tries to convince himself of, it still feels like this is all his fault. After all, he's the one that dreamed this for days and weeks before it happened, and yet he still was unable to prevent it from happening. There were so many steps he could have taken to stop this from happening well before it ever did. As far as he's concerned, if nothing else, that made this his fault. He will not be making any promises on that._

" _That's all I ask," she whispers. She leans forward, pressing a lingering kiss to his lips. It's completely chaste, though there is a faint taste of her desperation to it; she can probably taste his own, he thinks faintly, even as he wraps his arms around her._

_It doesn't feel right, he thinks faintly. It doesn't feel quite right without Duo here. The woman in his arms feels the same as she always does, and he feels the same as he always does when he kisses her… but it doesn't feel right—no, not 'not right', but too different—without their third. It's too different to think of even so much as deepening the kiss without Duo here, no matter how much they both might need this for comfort. They… They…_

" _We need Duo," Usagi whispers against his lips. "We need Duo to complete us."_

_Trust Usagi to say exactly what he isn't able to get out. With a sigh, he drops his head on her shoulder. Almost immediately, her arms wrap tightly around him, holding him as close to her body as possible with a strength that belies her small frame. He imagines that he's holding her just as tightly. He should be making an effort to ease his hold, given his own amazing strength, but he can't, probably for much the same reason as Usagi hasn't let go of him._

" _I miss Duo," Usagi whispers into his hair. Her voice shakes slightly, but tears don't seem likely to be coming again. "I want him back here with us right now."_

_It takes him a moment to recover himself enough to whisper in reply, "I… We'll get him back."_

_And there will be no helping the people who took Duo from them. He would kill them if he can get his hands on them; he would not hold himself responsible for what he would do. And who knew what Usagi would do? Given what they figured out about what all she can do, it could go so many ways…_

"Heero-kun?"

Usagi's voice was warm and right beside him and not upset in the least, so obviously it wasn't part of the dream. It was not an easy transition for once between the dream and wakefulness, and he found it vaguely difficult to be bothered by that. He wasn't too sure why, except that perhaps it had to do with how he had grown rather used to starting awake and he didn't always do great with changes to his routine.

At least they were on the move again. That helped a bit. It was a different motel than they had been in this morning. Duo had stated flat out that they were only staying here one night; they had made abysmal time on the road, given the continuing construction. They needed a bit more distance to be covered before Heero was going to feel comfortable staying put for any length of time.

Usagi had seemed faintly confused when Duo made his pronouncement, but she hadn't argued, for which he was grateful. It was one of many things they would need to explain to her eventually, but it was not something he was ready to tackle just yet. Once they had enough mileage covered and the feeling of doom abated a bit, then yes, he would be willing to have that conversation, but for now, he would continue to push his silence as far as she would allow it.

He was vaguely confused about why Usagi was right here, but in a moment or so, he recalled that Duo had only reserved one room at this particular motel without a word of explanation. The king-sized bed was a comfortable fit for the three of them, at least enough for him to have quickly fallen asleep. And then apparently he had started dreaming, and that was where the trouble lay.

Usagi was lying down next to him, a hand lightly touching his shoulder. That must have been what woke him up, even more than her voice. He didn't think he would ever shake being a light sleeper, except for these damned dreams. When one of them had him in its grasp, it was very hard for him to wake up, without some kind of outside influence or until the dream was done with him.

Beyond Usagi, Duo was leaning on one elbow and watching him cautiously. Unlike Usagi, he hadn't reached out to touch Heero, at least not yet. Then again, Duo understood better than almost anyone he knew what nightmares could be like. He had lived through the wars, fought by Heero's side in them; he knew about nightmares. Usagi? He didn't know there. Even if she did know, something told him she wasn't the kind to shy away from them; she legitimately wanted to help people quit hurting however she could.

How did he know that?

"Heero-kun?" Her voice shook just slightly as she spoke. It wasn't like the dream. She wasn't about to cry, and for that, he was thankful. Maybe it was just that she was worried? "Are you all right, Heero-kun?"

He nodded his response, not quite yet willing to try his voice out yet.

"Bad dream?" Duo asked in turn. There was concern in his voice as well, but it was buried under layers of careful nonchalance.

"Yeah" was all he offered in answer. Instead he pushed up out of bed, doing his best to ignore the sweat dripping off of him and made a fast track for the restroom. It might have been a bit late at night to shower, but he could at least toss some cold water on his face and see if that helped.

Not that it did. He could still feel the heat of the dream like he was standing in that place right now. He could still feel the guilt gnawing at him, like he had already lost, when instead it hadn't happened yet. It might yet still happen; someone still might try to take Duo from him… from them.

There had to be something he could to prevent that from happening. There had to be. Maybe if he could just do what the Heero in his dreams could not… Maybe if he could just manage to dream who took—takes, will take—Duo, then he could stop it from ever happening in the first place.

He had no ideas on how to force the dreams, though, at least not yet, so he didn't know how to make himself find out what he needed to know. Well, he would just have to figure out. He had to find a way to save Duo.

Someone tapped lightly on the bathroom door, and a bare moment later, Duo opened it, leaning in the doorframe. If he looked past the American, he could see Usagi sitting dead center in the middle of the bed, watching the two of them carefully. He had to actually wonder if she was already starting to regret casting in her lot with the likes of him.

"I'm not going to ask if you're all right," Duo commented almost idly, his voice pitched low, "because you obviously aren't. Just tell me if it was an actual nightmare or one of _those_ dreams."

For a split second, a ready lie leapt to his lips. It would have been very easy to say it was just a nightmare, easily forgotten and moved on from. He didn't feel right lying to Duo, though, even if it meant they were going to have to tell Usagi the truth about why they had sought her out, about why Relena had sent the Japanese blonde on with them. He wasn't sure it was a conversation he was ready to have just yet, but at the same time, he didn't want to lie to Duo—to either of them.

"Dream," he answered at last. It felt like the confession was physically dragged out of him, but nonetheless, he had managed to confess somehow.

"Is it something we need to be preparing for?"

And that was really the question, wasn't it? If he told them what the doom in his dream really was, that Duo was going to be taken, could it change what was coming? Would Duo still be taken? Or on the other hand, could it make things worse? Instead of kidnapping Duo, would these nameless and faceless enemies kill him instead? He didn't know. There were just too many variables to consider—and it seemed as though the Heero in his dreams had considered them all and yet still decided not to tell Duo anything ahead of time.

"I don't have a time or a sense of place or anything on it. It's just this… feeling of doom that's quickly approaching," he replied. It was prevaricating, but it was an answer. More than that, it was the truth: he had no idea what the sense of doom was, other than that Duo would not be with them when it struck.

Duo opened his mouth to speak, but it was Usagi's voice that cut through his thoughts. "But it is something that will happen?" She sounded amazingly steady. Actually, truth be told, she sounded completely unsurprised. She hadn't known about what it was Heero could do. Had she known someone else who could do something similar?

"Yeah, it's definitely going to happen," he returned.

Usagi nodded resolutely. "Then we'll be on alert. Even if you don't know where or when, we'll do our best to be ready."

"We'll do what we can, and hopefully everything will turn out all right." Duo leaned over to bump his shoulder lightly against Heero's, offering him an encouraging smile. "We've been up against long odds before, right?"

A comfortable silence reigned in the room for several long moments, while each of them was lost in their own thoughts. For his own part, Heero was just going to be glad that Duo had no pushed for more information on what the dream was about and that Usagi hadn't been too freaked out by this new ability of his.

Still, though, she had been almost unnervingly calm about it. She must have known someone else who could see the future too. It couldn't have been in the time she had been here, in this time, so it must have been from before. Did that mean she was starting to remember something, or was this just a reaction based on something like muscle memory? He wished he had the answers, but they stubbornly refused to come. And if Usagi wasn't pushing him for answers, then he wasn't going to push her for any either.

"So," she finally spoke up, her voice surprisingly free of rancor, "I can sort of guess that there are things going on here that I don't know about. I can live with that. I don't like it, but I can deal with it. Is there anything here that either of you can tell me about, though?"

He and Duo exchanged a glance that asked what the other felt comfortable telling her. It wasn't going to be an easy thing, no matter what they said here.

But if they wanted to keep Usagi here, on their side, and maybe even still happy and affectionate with them, they were going to have to be honest. There could be no lies if they wanted this to go any further. And from what he had seen in his dream, it would go further. More than that, he _wanted_ it to go further.

"I can see the future," he found himself admitting. "Well, at least small glimpses of the future."

Usagi blinked, once, twice, a third time, before nodding. "All right." And there was that easy acceptance again. How was it that she was able to accept with such ease the very thing that was straining the edges of his incredulity?

Duo shrugged. "It's a new thing, but I can move things with my mind." He paused for a split second before continuing. "And we might not have been entirely honest before. We didn't just fight in the wars. We were Gundam pilots during the wars."

Again, she nodded. "Relena-san mentioned a little about the Gundam pilots, though she didn't exactly name any names." Relena wouldn't have needed to, if she thought Usagi was from this time: the identities of at least three of the Gundam pilots were fairly well known throughout the World Sphere. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the first friends she ever introduced me to were Gundam pilots."

It looked as though Duo was about to say something else. He cut over instead. "You're taking all of this awfully well, Usagi-san."

She sighed, staring down at the floor. "I don't know. I don't think I am." She sighed, and it was a loud, heavy sound in the near silence of the room. "I don't recall anything before when Relena-san found me, not really, but I do think sometimes that I remember a few things from before then. I remember having friends who were all delightfully odd, but I don't remember what they looked like or what their names were. I remember fighting, but I don't remember why or against whom."

"That's more than Relena said you remembered," Duo commented mildly, sitting down next to her on the edge of the bed and wrapping an arm around her shoulders, drawing her closer to him.

"I didn't start remembering even this much until a few nights ago, the night you both arrive, the night of the big storm," she admitted in hushed tones. Almost cautiously, she let herself rest against Duo's side. "And maybe all of this doesn't seem so strange to me because I have vague memories of even stranger things: magic and wings and the world's ending and beginning anew with a wish. After that, nothing seems odd."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **02 July 2012**
> 
> I've been holding this chapter ransom for some more hits or even a review on the previous one. Barring those, I will only post the remaining chapters on my own website.
> 
> Hate to be this way, but why bother if there's no interest?
> 
> Apollymi


	10. Chapter Nine

"…the world's ending and beginning anew with a wish…"

It had been hours since Usagi had said those words, and they were still stuck in his head. Had Relena known about this when she sent Usagi with them? He was inclined to think that she hadn't _known_ , but he was fairly certain that she had suspected. Maybe she hadn't known that it might have happened before, but that it could happen? That he would place bets on, if he were a betting man.

He didn't want to think that of Relena, but he had his suspicions. She had said something to him along those lines, if nothing else: that she feared what could happen if someone made the wrong wish around Usagi. She hadn't trusted herself to not be that person, but she had trusted him and Duo on the regard. That, at least, he could make sense of: they weren't the types to try to wish something into existence, not when it could be done themselves with a bit of effort.

Usagi had finally gone back to sleep after a few hours of talking about everything that was utterly unimportant and even a while of the television playing quietly in the background, but it didn't seem as though she was sleeping easily this time. She had wrapped herself around Duo, currently the only one on the bed with her, and had tangled a hand in his braid with a death grip. Perhaps even more disturbing was the fact that she was laying completely still and silent, barring breathing and the occasional whimper.

Whatever _she_ was dreaming of was not pleasant.

Duo had lain down on the bed next to her a few hours ago, and he had barely moved. Unlike Usagi, though, he was still awake. He was just as quiet, though, and maybe even more so. He had an arm around Usagi and was holding her tightly against him.

He could still feel himself holding a dream version of Usagi in a time that was still yet to come in a place he did not yet know. He knew how she tasted after she cried… and she hadn't even had the chance to cry yet.

Honestly, this was all getting to be a bit too much for him. The tenses of verbs alone were too confusing to bear serious thought. There were too many things that he felt like he had already done that weren't even close to happening yet.

Well, he assumed they weren't close to happening yet. He really didn't know. Part of him was living in terror of the morning Usagi pulled _that_ dress out of her bag to wear. Hell, part of him was tempted to burn the damned thing before she could. The rest of him had this sinking suspicion, like a weight in his stomach, that doing something like that would do absolutely nothing to change what was still to come. If he burned _that_ dress, either she would get another just like it or the dreams would change enough to have her wear something else.

At least if she still had _that_ dress, the day she put it on, he would know to be on alert. It might give him the extra warning he would need to make certain that no one touched Duo. It was only a matter of time after all. It wasn't like the bag Usagi had brought along from Relena's was that large. Sooner or later, she would get to _that_ dress, and it would be _that_ day.

"You're thinking awfully hard about something," Duo whispered barely loud enough for him to hear the words spoken. "Care to share?"

He stayed silent for another long moment before shrugging slightly. "Thinking about what Usagi said. About the world ending and restarting with a wish."

"You think someone made a wish that destroyed the world where…" he broke off, wincing, "… _when_ , I mean, and I'm never going to get used to that—when she came from?"

He shrugged again, leaning back against the small dresser that stood across from the bed, near the bathroom door. The floor wasn't too comfortable, only slightly better than sitting on bare concrete, but he wasn't sure he was ready to come up on the bed until he had all of this sorted out in his own mind.

Besides, it wasn't like he was too far away: the room was small enough that his feet and knees were almost pressed up against the side of the bed. The bed itself was just low enough that he had a clear view across it to see the door and the small window next to it. The room was tiny, yes, but it could be made defendable in a pinch.

And he hadn't thought of stuff like that in a while, not consciously at least. He might occasionally still find himself sizing up exits to a room, especially when he was uncomfortable or nervous, but consciously? It had been quite a while. This whole thing had him more on edge than he had realized.

"Our records from that time, from when Usagi's from, are so limited that it's really hard to know anything," he answered slowly.

Duo nodded. "I remember that bit of history class. Remember? When we were stationed out of that one school?" If it had been most anyone else, he would have waited for something more specific. With Duo, though, he knew exactly which school the other meant, and so he nodded his understanding. "Something big happened in Tokyo around the end of the twentieth century. The space station reported seeing some kind of pink dome over that area of Japan, and when the dome finally faded and people were able to get in again, over half the city's population was gone."

"Most of the ones declared missing were in their teens and twenties, and no one could explain it," he added. "I remember."

"That's the time Usagi would be from. The time and the place." He nodded, even though it seemed as thought Duo was mostly just thinking out loud. "No one ever found a trace of any of them. Do you suppose more of those missing people are here now?"

"Maybe," he prevaricated. "One person can be kept a secret, but that many? I doubt it." He refused to wince at the harsh tone of his voice, even at a whisper. Duo knew him well enough by now to not take offense.

"True" was all that Duo replied. He was silent for a long moment, clearly wrestling over something, before he finally came to a decision to say whatever it was. "I heard a story once. I mean, it was a kid's story, but it was from that time. I don't know."

"Tell me." He tried not to make it sound like an order, but on that front, he had a feeling he failed miserably. That was not something he was going to worry about. There probably wasn't a lot of value to the story anyway, if it was just some kid's fairy tale.

"It went something like this: there were these warriors, a group of about nine or ten of them, all of them women. They were led by—of course—their princess in a fight against evil. Day after day, night after night, and year after year, they supposedly fought the forces of darkness, until one day they met an evil they couldn't defeat. One by one, the warriors fell until only the princess remained. The way I heard it, no one knows what happened after that, but the princess was never seen or heard from again."

He found himself raising a skeptic eyebrow. "And this is from the twentieth century?"

"As I heard it, yeah, it is. Supposedly they were inside Tokyo fighting when the dome went up, and when it came back down, none of them could be found again."

It smacked of a story made up to explain the mass disappearances, at least to him, but at the same time… Could it have actually had something to do with whatever it was that had happened way back then? Usagi said she remembered fighting and strange friends and magic. The wings bit he was less certain on, but what she had said a few hours ago did sort of tally with Duo's story.

"I don't know enough about the time period to be sure," he finally admitted. "It never seemed an important period of time to be heavily knowledgeable on." He sighed, adjusting slightly where he sat on the hard floor. "Do you know anything else about that story?"

Duo shook his head sadly. "I never bothered looking into it. I just always kind of assumed it was a story meant to reassure little kids." A puzzled look must have crossed over his face because the American then continued, "The idea is that the princess of the warriors is still out there and still fighting to keep the worlds safe. If no one knows for certain she's dead, then by story logic, she has to be alive and still doing whatever it was she was doing before: defending humanity from evil."

"Do you think there's any truth to it?" He couldn't believe that he had actually just asked that question. What the hell was wrong with him? Why was he believing a word of this?

Because he had been seeing some very strange things over the last few weeks. A children's story about magical warrior women was pretty far down on the list of weirdness. Even if it turned out to be in the slightest bit true, he could handle it better than the possibility of losing Duo. He could definitely handle it better than the mere _idea_ of time travel.

"If you had asked me that a week or two ago, I would have said 'hell no,'" Duo admitted slowly, carefully, his voice still quiet to avoid waking Usagi, "but now? I don't know. There is a possibility, I guess. I mean, we have Usagi here, and she's real and from that same time period. Who's to say that Sailor Moon wasn't real too?"

"Sailor Moon?" Now why did that sound faintly familiar? He couldn't imagine where he had heard it before, but it did ping something in the back of his mind.

"In the story, the princess, Serenity, fought under the name Sailor Moon. Supposedly all the warriors had—I don't know—codenames taken from the planets. That's how stories go, you know?"

He wasn't overly familiar with the concept of kids' stories, but he nodded anyway. "Yeah," he replied.

"You have no idea, do you?" Duo sounded amused. In response, he offered a vague shrug, neither confirming nor denying anything on the subject. "Come back to bed, Heero. We'll get it all sorted out in the morning. There really isn't anything else we can do tonight."

There was plenty he could do tonight, he wanted to object. His laptop was in his bag nearest to the door. He could at least start looking up information on this Sailor Moon person. As far as he was concerned, it would be a waste of time, but it was a chance for him to feel somewhat useful.

But there would be the entire car ride to wherever they were going next for him to work on that, at least the portions where Duo actually let him drive. To be fair, maybe doing all this driving was Duo's way of feeling useful. That was stupid, though: Duo had been doing plenty of useful things since this whole thing started. He probably never would have pursued the idea of coming after Usagi if Duo hadn't pushed him, and Duo was able to talk to both of them, and… and…

But all of this was just him making excuses. He wasn't quite ready to admit that, between the dream and Usagi's words and even this fairy story, he was a bit… uncomfortable. This was all getting to be a bit overwhelming…

And wasn't that a pretty major understatement? He was well past overwhelmed. He was almost to the point of just throwing up his hands in despair, of sitting in a corner somewhere and waiting for all of this to pass. He couldn't and wouldn't do that to Duo or Usagi, though, no matter how far out of his fairly normal, structured life things ended up getting. He would not do that to either of them.

All that aside, it didn't mean that he was feeling comfortable with the situation as it stood at the moment. Usagi was starting to get her memories back, even if it was very slowly. He was oddly all right with that. Oh, he wanted her to get her memories back… That is, if that was also what she wanted. He knew better than most that sometimes _not_ remembering was a blessing that, once gone, could never be taken for granted again.

If she wanted to remember, then he—and Duo too, no doubt—would do what they could, do everything in their respective powers, to make sure that was what happened. But if she didn't want to remember, he didn't know what they were going to do. The memories would come back if she wanted them to or not.

"I would like to look up some stuff, see what I can find on that Sailor Moon person you mentioned," he finally decided.

Duo rolled his eyes, even as he chuckled. "I don't suppose I can persuade you to let it rest until tomorrow?" He glanced at the clock and winced hard. "Or rather a brighter part of today?"

He followed Duo's gaze and had to resist a wince himself. The time was well after midnight. In fact, it was rapidly getting towards a time he would find himself more likely to call a time to get out of bed instead of into it. They weren't going to be good for much of anything tomorrow.

Oh, they had both gone into battle on a whole lot less sleep than this. They had both piloted their Gundams on a hell of a lot less sleep than this. But that was then and this was now. This was trying to drive in a car, with other people on the road who took a less than cautious approach to heavy traffic and with police officers who could pull them over if either's driving became erratic from the lack of sleep.

Besides, that had been two years ago. A lot had changed since then. They had changed a lot since then.

"All right," he finally agreed. There would be time tomorrow—later today—after all. There wasn't a lot of sense in pushing himself on what might yet prove to be a fruitless lead tonight, not when he could work on it during the downtime in the car.

Slowly he pushed himself to his feet and crossed the half step to the bed. He hesitated for a brief moment before sinking down to sit on Duo's free side, closer to the middle of the bed than where he normally would have chosen: the far edge of the bed, closest to the door. Slowly but surely, they were making changes on his habits. This one was one that he would not mind seeing go.

Duo glanced over at the light switch. A moment later, it switched itself off. Well, that was a handy, if slightly frivolous, use of his new abilities. Maybe it helped keep him in practice, moving increasingly smaller things?

"Maybe we should plan to stay here tonight?" Duo opined in the near total darkness of the room. Even though he wasn't speaking any louder than he had been before and certainly no louder than a whisper to keep from waking up Usagi, his voice seemed a lot closer and more intimate here in the dark. He found himself closing his eyes to take it in. "So that we aren't pushing ourselves too hard tomorrow?"

"All right," he agreed in turn. "I can get my research in then."

Duo dropped a kiss on the top of his head even as he yawned and then chuckled softly. He could more feel it through the bed than hear it out loud. "Only you would want to research Sailor Moon over staying in bed all day."

He snorted slightly and didn't even bother trying to deny it. It was the truth, after all. There was no changing that.

It was of no surprise to him that Duo dropped off to sleep almost immediately. He had to be worn out from all the driving, not to mention the emotional conversation earlier. Even as he started to go to sleep himself, he could faintly make out Usagi's voice quietly talking in her sleep. The words were in their shared native language, which made sense if she was talking in her sleep. Talking in her sleep or not, his tired mind did take the time to note the words being said, if he needed to ask about them later:

" _Ai to Seigi no…_ " A long pause. " _Sera fuku bishoujo senshi…_ "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **11 July 2012**
> 
> I've been forgetting to upload this. Bad author, bad.
> 
> My beta reader and I have made a bet regarding Belladonna: for every 100 hits, you guys help me get to here on FFnet, I get to have either ice cream, a milkshake, or a smoothie. So help me out and let's see what we can do.
> 
> (There was even some discussion of something extra nice per every 10 reviews. This is relevant to my interests.)
> 
> Thanks,  
> Apollymi


	11. Chapter Ten

Of all the mornings he had had with Duo and Usagi so far, even though there hadn't been that many of them yet, by far this one was the most awkward to date. Somehow Duo had managed to wake up before him, though the other man had just lain awake. When Heero woke up, the television was on, though the sound was off and closed captioning was turned on; the local news was on.

Only a few moments later, Usagi stirred, waking up surprisingly early for her so far. Almost immediately, she had popped up, grabbed her bag from beside the bed, and darted into the bathroom, closing the door tightly behind her. If she said anything, it was little more than a mumbled apology of some sort that he wasn't too sure he could almost anything of.

Duo winced slightly, sitting up stiffly. "I guess that answers the question about how much Usagi remembers about last night."

In that case, Usagi was doing better than he was. He must have been more tired than he realized for his memory to not be too clear on last night. He remembered them talking and he remembered something about a fairy tale, something he was going to research once he got up in the morning. Anything more definitely than that, though, and he was a bit in the dark. He didn't think they had gotten up to anything more than some really disturbing discussion and confessions last night, and…

And…

And yeah, that seemed like about it, except for something Usagi had said in her sleep right before he drifted off as well, something that made absolutely no sense, even for talking in her sleep.

To be sure, though, he sat up as well and turned to Duo to ask for confirmation. "Did you hear Usagi say something last night? After we went to bed?" Vaguely, in some corner of his consciousness, he heard and noted the shower cutting on.

Duo shrugged. "I don't know. I mean, well, I dropped off pretty quick. Maybe? I thought I heard her say something, but it didn't make any kind of sense to me." He leaned back, fixing Heero with a sharp look. "But I guess it wasn't nonsense then, not if you asking about it."

"It was in Japanese." He didn't mention that it was an older form of Japanese, definitely not what was spoken in the country or its space colonies now. Duo could probably guess that. "But you're right about it not making any kind of sense."

"So what was it then?"

He shrugged, a little reluctant to repeat it for some reason he couldn't quite put words to. "I think it was something like ' _ai to seigi no, sera fuku bishoujo senshi_ ,' but like I said, it doesn't make a lot of sense."

"And it makes even less sense when you don't speak the language, Heero." Duo sounded a little annoyed, but there wasn't a lot he could do about it right now.

"Just… let me go look into some stuff and see what I can find out. If there's anything to it, I swear I'll tell you."

"I'll hold you to that, Heero." But at least he was grinning again. That was a small victory, if nothing else.

He glanced towards the bathroom and shifted a bit uncomfortably. "Maybe I shouldn't be doing that here when she gets out."

Duo followed his gaze and slowly nodded. "Maybe not." He didn't sound as though he was too certain he believed it, though. Or maybe he just didn't know for sure either. Maybe that was the closer explanation, though.

Or maybe he just wasn't used to looking too closely into people's motives any more. He had never been any good at trying to figure out Duo's to begin with, from way back when they first met—and Duo shot him and then subsequently broke him out of the Alliance Hospital where he was being held. He hadn't gotten any better at it in the years since that day.

Maybe it was that Duo was just that unpredictable. Maybe it was just that he was too used to Duo fall in line with whatever it was Heero wanted. And maybe he shouldn't always expect that of Duo. And…

Damn it. This was all getting to be a bit too confusing for him for this early in the morning… or whatever time it was. No, he was just going to find a library to hole up in or something and do this bit of research and come back, and then they could all deal with this.

"I won't be gone too long: maybe a few hours," he offered, trying not to sound as nervous and confused as he felt inside.

Duo nodded once decisively. "While you're out, bring us back some lunch. We can figure out where we're going next when you get back. All right?"

He nodded in response, perhaps a little too enthusiastically… or maybe it was that he nodded at all. "I can do that."

"Are _you_ all right, Heero?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." He pushed himself to his feet and grabbed his bag in one quick movement, before he paused and sighed. By no means did he want to lie to Duo, and that was entirely too close to one right there. "I'm okay. I'm just not… used to all of this. It's going to take some getting used to."

"Me and Usagi? Or all the rest of this?" Duo's voice was quiet as he asked. It was a little bit surprising, but he had give up on being too surprised by anything Duo said or did long ago.

"All the rest of this. I… I guess I… like this with the three of us. The rest of this is just… overwhelming," he finally managed to get out. God, that sounded so pitiful to his own ears. It had to sound even worse to Duo.

But if Duo thought that, he didn't say anything. Instead, he smiled tightly. "It is all pretty overwhelming, isn't it? Between the powers and this doom you mentioned and Usagi's memories trying to come back, it is all a bit much. There's not much to do for it, though, I guess."

"How—How are you…?" He trailed off, unsure about exactly what it was he was about to ask the other man.

Thankfully, though, Duo seemed to know what he was asking even before he finished asking it. "How am I dealing all of it?" He nodded, intensely grateful that at least Duo had known what he meant. The other man shrugged easily and offered a bit of a grin. "I'm not dealing with it too great, you know. I just got my freaking out done a while back, before I found you, and I'm trying to take the rest of it as it comes. That said, though, I'm not sure how much higher I can set my threshold for weird shit. If Bigfoot comes through that door any time soon, you guys are on your own because my brain is going to check the hell out then."

He couldn't help it: the image sent an involuntary snicker through him. "I'll keep that in mind," he commented dryly. "We don't think that's a possibility, do we?"

"God, I hope not." Duo nudged Heero's bag with his toes. "Go ahead and get your stuff done. Usagi and I will hold down the fort. Just don't forget to bring back lunch. You've seen that woman eat. I don't want to be her next meal, at least not like _that_."

He could feel the beginnings of a flush starting to cover his face, and he resolutely turned away, hopefully before Duo could see it. He didn't think he was too successful, given the chuckle he heard from the other man. Once he was sure his voice was going to be steady, he commented, "She doesn't seem the cannibal type."

"No, but you're both welcome to eat me alive any time you want." And that was it: he could actually feel the red explode all over his face at the mental image _that_ presented. He actually had to sink back down on the bed before his knees gave out. Duo laughed again and kissed him briefly. "I'm going to grab something from the soda machine real quick. Give you a chance to get dressed."

And recover his composure a bit as well, but thankfully that went unspoken. Duo, at least, didn't mind going outside in nothing but his boxers and a t-shirt, though he did toe on his tennis shoes as well before heading out.

It took him a moment to start moving, but once he did, he had his jeans and a new tank top on in quick time. He was tying off his tennis shoes by the time Duo came back, a soda can in hand. "Ready to head out?"

He nodded. "Yeah." He folded his laptop under his arm, pushing himself to his feet once again.

"I thought we weren't planning on leaving right away." Usagi's voice cut through him like ice-cold water and he stood frozen where he was. He hadn't heard the shower cut off, much less her getting dressed and coming out. He didn't think that Duo's teasing had shaken him up that much, but apparently all evidence was to the contrary. In all fairness, though, apparently she had only just gotten out of the shower: she was all but dripping wet and was wearing only a towel wrapped around her.

And he was completely willing to admit that his brain decided to short-circuit a bit at the sight. What could he say? Despite all attempts to prove the opposite, he was apparently human. Out of the corner of his eye, he could tell Duo was staring just as hard as he was and even more blatantly.

As usual, Duo recovered much more quickly, even if his voice was suspiciously deeper than it normally was. "We're not leaving the motel yet. Heero was just going to get some quiet research time in, right?" And like an idiot, all he could was nod his agreement. "Please, no need to rush on our behalf."

As if on cue, Usagi looked down and noticed what she was—or rather, was not—wearing. A flush to rival his own touched her cheeks, and for a moment, it looked like she was going to make a break for back into the bathroom, possibly slamming the door in their faces. He was almost prepared for that to happen. Instead, she took a deep breath, apparently to calm herself, and offered a grin that was at once both flirty and shy, along with a wink. "See something you like, Duo-kun?"

"A couple of things actually."

"Heero-kun?" He felt his eyes go slightly wide with the attention on him. "What about you? Do you see something you like?" He nodded slightly. Any words he may have had seemed to have been robbed from his mouth. "Good." She bit her lower lip lightly before coming to some decision, and stepping quietly across the floor to stand in front of him. "I like that, Heero."

It took a second for his brain to process that she had dropped the honorific from his name completely the last time she said it, long enough for him to be overwhelmed again by the feel of her pressing up against him and capturing his lips rather thoroughly. A moment later, he felt Duo against his back, his arms around Heero, lightly stroking his sides and past him to Usagi.

It was Duo that pulled back first, though. "Say stop whenever you need us to, Heero, okay?" Usagi pulled back as well to fix him with an unyielding look.

"Okay," he answered, even if it was more a breathy whisper than anything else.

"We mean it, Heero," Usagi returned sternly. "The minute you need us to stop, we will, but you have to say something." She met Duo's eyes over his shoulder, the two of them seeming to be deeply involved in some silent but heavy conversation, before she continued speaking. "Say you understand because otherwise this goes no further."

"I understand. I'll say something if I need either of you to stop," he stated. Some time now, he was going to have to tell them that he wasn't some delicate flower and they could both stop treating him like one. One of these days anyway…

"Good," Duo all but growled. He turned Heero's head to face him and pulled him into a passionate kiss. To his other side, he could still feel Usagi, her hands now occupied with his tank top.

After a moment or two, though, it got pretty hard to tell whose hands belonged to whom when they were all over his body.

He never did have to say stop or wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **12 July 2012**
> 
> My beta-reader, the always awesome Katsuko, summed up the end of this chapter as "and they done sex". Mostly, I cut it off there because I was feeling lazy and didn't want to change ratings. Pretty terrible, huh?
> 
> She and I have made a bet regarding Belladonna: for every 100 hits, you guys help me get to here on FFnet, I get to have either ice cream, a milkshake, or a smoothie. So help me out and let's see what we can do.
> 
> (There was even some discussion of something extra nice per every 10 reviews. This is relevant to my interests.) Thank you to ThoseRainyDays for the lovely review I just got. Have a new chapter!
> 
> Thanks,  
> Apollymi


	12. Chapter Eleven

For someone who had been trying to get out the door as hard as Heero had been a few hours before, it had certainly taken him a while to do so now, Duo thought reflectively. Of course, he had been nearly as red as anything Duo had ever had seen when he went, but he had indeed still headed out to get a bit of research in before they headed out tomorrow morning.

Personally, he didn't see the big deal about doing this particular bit of research with Usagi around, but Heero had always been a bit secretive and possessive with his laptop. It had taken Duo years of knowing the man to be able to touch the thing, much less operate it. When they had first met, years ago, Heero had occasionally even demanded that Duo leave the room before he would even go online to check for missions. The longer they had worked together, the more that had changed, but it was still a very slow process.

Earning Heero's trust was not an overnight kind of thing, which probably made Usagi all the more rare than even she was aware of. He had long ago resigned himself to being nothing more than a good friend to Heero. He would have called the Japanese man his best friend, but he wasn't sure that Heero would have thought the same way about him. If he got to spend the rest of his life with Heero around, he would take that any way he could, including and especially as his close friend and confidante.

He was sure that he knew more about Heero than most anyone else in the entirety of the World Sphere. There was a lot he didn't know, but again, he would take what he could get. He certainly wouldn't have imagined that he would get to ever experience this kind of intimacy with him in this lifetime, if Usagi hadn't pushed the issue with Heero, both today and a few nights ago. All his words had never shaken Heero as much as hers had, about the Heero they saw being different from the Heero he saw in the mirror. Truer words had never been spoken, and it seemed to get through to the other man.

And today... Today had been a day of surprises, all of them good so far. He could definitely live with this change in the relationship the three of them were beginning to share. What a shock this had to have been for Heero, though. It was sort of like from famine to feast: no relationships like this at all to having two lovers at once.

It was certainly a bit of a culture shock for him, and he had a bit more experience in sex than Heero had ever had, at least that he knew of. Usagi? There was no way of knowing. She had been with someone else before, but if she remembered who that was, she hadn't said anything yet.

"You're thinking about something awfully hard over there, Duo." She lay next to him on her stomach, propped up on her forearms. Her hair had dried while they were otherwise occupied and was well on its way to being a huge mess. Her lips were kiss-swollen, and there were red marks everywhere he could see with the sheet in the way from where he and Heero had lingered. She looked gorgeous right now, as far as he was concerned. And realistically, he knew he appeared about the same right now. They had all taken their time in this initial exploration. And it had been wonderful. "You're not having second thoughts, are you?"

"And here I thought we were going to have to do this with Heero, not you, Usagi," he returned.

"Nah," she returned. "I'm good with this. As long as you and Heero are both happy too, I'm very good with all of this. So, are you good with this?"

He gave it a moment or two's thought, and then he nodded. "I'm definitely good with this. I guess I'm just gathering wool."

She nodded slowly and thoughtfully. It seemed like she believed him at least. He had not yet had a chance to tell her a small truth about himself: he ran, he hid, but he would never tell a lie. It had been his motto during the war, but he still lived it. It was his mantra. It was hard as hell some days, but it kept him going.

"So I guess Heero took off to get his research done?" He nodded. "Does he does this often?"

He shrugged. "I... He's protective of that damn laptop. Took me years to get to use the thing, myself. Don't be insulted because of how he is with it."

"Okay." She grinned suddenly, and it was amazing how it could brighten the room, even when it was already pretty damn bright. "As long as he isn't cheating on us with it."

A laugh slipped out of him, completely unexpectedly. Once he started, it was hard to stop. "The unspoken fourth here?" he returned with a wink.

"Oh, definitely. A lesser woman might be inclined to declare the thing her rival, though, you know."

"Believe me: I've thought of it as a rival for years. You have no idea how many times I've thought about dropping it off a bridge. Or a building. Or eject it from a ship in re-entry."

"You've given this some thought." He shrugged. There was no denying that fact, just like there was no denying how he had felt about it over the years. "I'm sure, between the two of us, we can come up with something to get and keep his attention on us."

Now that was a thought he was going to enjoy at length sooner or later. Still... "We'll have to be careful not to overwhelm him, Usagi. This is all pretty new for him."

"It's pretty new for all of us."

"Newer for Heero," he persisted.

She nodded. "I'm not disagreeing. And I want what's best for Heero, the same as you, Duo. Please don't think otherwise." She sighed and frowned, rolling over onto her back to stare up at the ceiling. "My whole life, people have thought I was selfish and self-centered and weak. I'm not. I try not to be." She sighed again. "I try very hard not to be. I want to be what's best for both of you. I want the two of us to be what's best for Heero."

Her whole life? She had remembered more? "Usagi?" Once her attention was back on him, he continued, "Do you remember something else?"

She shook her head slowly. "Mostly just feelings and weird thoughts keep popping into my head." He nodded his encouragement, and she went on. "Stuff like 'if Rei-chan could see me now' or 'why didn't I think of this solution to boy problems years ago'. That sort of stuff. Nothing really helpful to figuring out anything about myself. I don't even know who 'Rei-chan' is or was or what." She laughed, and it sounded weak and small. "I don't even know what guy trouble I'm thinking about."

Without giving it any thought, he reached out and slipped an arm under her, pulling her close up to him. "It'll come back to you eventually, Usagi. Don't push it, and it'll come back."

"You think so?" While at least tears didn't seem imminent, they didn't seem like they were off the table yet either. Her voice sounded a little shaky, and she wasn't meeting his eyes. "Do you really think it will all come back to me?"

"More than likely," he stated decisively. Since it had started coming back in fits and spurts, in small flashes here and there, he felt pretty comfortable saying that she would start remembering her past with some degree of certainty. That made it the truth. "Thought it will probably be when you're least expecting it."

"Yeah?" Was that the beginning of hope in her voice? That could be a good thing.

"Definitely." He carefully schooled his face into the most serious, impassive face he could realistically break out right now. "That's how it always happens in the movies, anyway."

"Duo!" Without warning, he got a face full of pillow. Usagi was laughing, though, a huge smile spreading all over face and growing by the second. As Heero would have said, once upon a time, mission accomplished. "You're terrible."

"That's not what you were saying before," he returned immediately with a wink, chuckling a bit himself.

"Well, clearly I was young and didn't know better then. You're terrible. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it." She was trying to sound imperious, but the giggles that were still escaping her ruined the illusion more than a bit. In fact, it flat out destroyed it.

It made her irresistible at the moment, and he pulled her back under him for another long, lingering kiss. The only way it could have been better would have been if Heero were here too. He didn't know what he was missing, that was for sure. "Clearly you made me this way in that case," he returned.

"I'll make a note of that," she commented a bit breathlessly.

All this play wasn't without its effect on him, but... Heero... "We should get dressed, before we scandalize Heero all over again when he gets back."

She nodded then glanced down at herself. "I think I need another shower. I seem to have undone the benefits my previous one."

"Mind if I join you?" he quipped before rolling off her to glance around the room.

His bookbag was around here somewhere, and he ought to have one more clean set of clothes before he needed to do laundry. Hell, at this point, they all probably needed to do laundry. Usagi hadn't exactly left Relena's with a whole lot more clothes than either of them possessed.

"Oh, I would love for you to join me, Duo," she returned, already heading back in the bathroom where her own small bag was stashed from her earlier shower, "but if you did, we'd probably still be in here when Heero got back. I thought the point was not to scandalize him beyond repair?"

"Well, definitely not beyond repair, but Heero could probably stand to be scandalized a little bit."

"In stages then, I guess. Like you said, this is all still very new to him. We don't want to push him too far too fast."

"Agreed." Usagi pushed the bathroom door most of the way closed, but she didn't seal it, letting steam drift out as she turned the water back on.

At least this shower was a lot quicker than her last one. When she exited the bathroom again, it was pretty apparently she had decided to forgo washing her hair again, and he could kind of understand why: his own hair was nearly as long and as thick as hers, and it took forever to dry sometimes. Just from the last few days, he had noticed the same of hers.

She'd slipped into a long white sundress that he could have sworn he recognized from somewhere, probably Relena having worn it somewhere before and been photographed in it. Well, it wasn't like Usagi had much of her own yet, and if Relena's hand-me-downs fit, then there was no real reason not to take them. Relena would have been happy seeing them put to good use.

Besides, maybe it was his own admittedly biased opinion, but the dress looked a whole lot better on Usagi than it ever had on Relena. But that was, again, his opinion, and he could admit with no problem that he was definitely biased in Usagi's favor over Relena's. Besides, that odd broach she was always wearing did a lot to improve an otherwise plain piece of clothing. Relena wasn't too big on accessories like that.

She was struggling to get a brush through her hair, and yeah, they had made a mess of it, hadn't they? "Need some help?" he asked without putting too much thought into it. Once the words were out, though, he didn't want to take them back again. He had enjoyed having his hands in her hair, although not nearly as much as Heero obviously had.

"Yeah, I could use an assist here," she complained, tugging at a particularly vicious tangle. She turned a critical eye on him and continued, "And only if I get to return the favor."

He winced slightly. He hadn't really taken the time to check out his own hair yet. Finding where his bookbag had gotten to and getting dressed had taken a more pressing priority than that. "That bad, huh?"

"Heero has a thing for hair, I'm thinking," she said in lieu of a real answer, even as she handed over the hairbrush and sat down on the edge of the bed. Though, truthfully, that was all that needed to be said on the matter really. Heero did indeed have a thing for their hair, and that at least he hadn't had any trouble demonstrating in great detail. "I could pull it up like this, but it'll just get worse while we're in the car later."

Or with anything else they might do later, he finished. "I'll see what I can do with the tangles, but you're on your own with the styling. If it's not a braid or a ponytail, it's out of my league." He deliberately did not add that Heero would probably be the first one of them to figure out how to put Usagi's hair up for her. They both knew it was true. "What do you call this style anyway?"

She shrugged lightly, obviously trying not to move too much. "Most people called it ' _odango_ '. Dumplings... or maybe meatballs," she immediately clarified, clearly remembering that he didn't speak the language she and Heero shared. "I'm not sure which is the better translation. The words are in my head and I can speak them, but sometimes they don't seem to mean quite the same thing I think they should. Do you know what I mean?"

"Lost in translation?" he hazarded, carefully working out another vicious snarl.

"More or less, I guess."

"So what was that you and Heero were talking about a couple of days ago? With... honorifics, I think it was? What does that mean?" he prompted. "Heero said he was going to tell me, but he still hasn't gotten around to it yet." And why adding _-chan_ to his name had been funny. That would be good to know too.

"It's like… like… I don't know… A way of showing respect or affection," she paused, snickering lightly, "or even being silly. Like you would call someone you don't know by their family name and _–san_ or their first name and _–san_ , or to show respect, or even just for everyday stuff; it's not uncommon to hear married couples call each other _–san_. You would use _–kun_ for close friends or someone junior to you or someone you're attached to or a friend who's a guy."

And that ran the gamut of what she had called them and what she did call Relena… except for one. "And what about _–chan_?"

She snuck as much a glance over her shoulder at him as she could. "I should have known you weren't going to drop it. Mostly girls use it referring to each other, or people use it talking about babies. Some people use it for their boyfriends or girlfriends or best friends. I remember the look on his face the first time I called him 'Mamo-chan'…" She broke off, and he could faintly see her biting her lower lip. "Actually, no, I can't remember it. It was there for a second, but then it was gone again."

Keeping his own voice deliberately upbeat, he commented, "See? What did I say? The minute you're least expecting it. So what about now that you're not using the honorifics? Does that mean something too?"

And there was that faint flush across her cheeks ago. "Dropping the honorific is really only used between people you're intimate with: family, very close friends, lovers…" She shifted a little where she sat before drawing herself up to sit straight. "I guess that fits us three now, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, I guess it does at that." He passed the brush back to her over her shoulder. "Your hair's done."

She nodded once. "Except for what I need to do."

Without another word, she started pulling and twisting and doing some of the most complicated things he had ever seen done with hair, until the familiar twin buns and tails formed and were secured in place. He had been sitting behind her watching her pull them up, and he still wasn't too sure how the look—the _odango_ , he thought the word was—had come up. It was going to take him some time to figure out exactly how to go about replicating it.

Heero, on the other hand, would probably have it figured out within the first few times he saw her do it, and he wouldn't put it past the man to want to take over doing her hair for her. The man was a perfectionist, after all, who definitely had a thing for hair.

"I still have no idea how you did that," he admitted with a wry grin.

"I think I've been doing it for quite a while," she returned, "most of my life maybe. The first day after I woke up in that hospital where Relena-san found me, I pulled it up like this without even having to think about it. It was just the first thing that came to mind, before the nurses could carry through on their threats to cut it." She smiled a bit self-deprecatingly. "It was a bit of a mess back then. _I_ was a bit of a mess back then."

She turned fully around to face him, straddling his lap for a lingering kiss, before leaning back to whisper, "Thank you, Duo. I think I needed to hear that."

Wordlessly, he pulled her back to him, close against his body, and returned the kiss. He was definitely starting to get why people spent so much time doing this: it seemed like such a small thing, giving someone else a kiss, but it was. It so very much wasn't. It was comfort and desire and affection and maybe even love all rolled up into one package. He was really starting to appreciate being able to do that with either of them whenever he wanted. It would be better once Heero was back here, but this wasn't too bad as it was. He could get really, really used to having this.

So of course that was when the door flew open, hard enough to slam against the wall behind it with a loud bang; it almost sounded like something breaking. If he wasn't intimately familiar with the actual sound, he might have even said it was like a gunshot in the quiet room, but it wasn't like that. It really wasn't.

Usagi's eyes went wide as saucers, and she yanked back away from him. That was his first clue that, no, this wasn't Heero coming back in a fit of piqué. This was something else altogether.

Four mountains of men in suits and sunglasses (could they be any more cliché?) stood in the tight space between the door and their bed; a fifth one was barely visible on the other side of the door. Whoever they were, they had come out in force.

He had a gun in the room, but it was in his bookbag. There was probably one in Heero's too, but he had taken it with him. Now that was probably a precaution worth taking, if he was having to deal with anything like what they were.

Usagi flew back from him, her back hitting the wall with a bang, giving him room to maneuver. It wasn't a lot, but it was more than he had had before. He could at least get to his feet and get turned around to face the intruders. The room was too damn small, he thought sourly, especially when the enemy had already managed to breach it.

Well, there was a solution for that.

"Give us the Rabbit," Burly Guy in the Front (Duo would designate him Number One, to keep them apart) demanded. "Give us the Rabbit, and no one gets hurt."

"Sorry, guy, no rabbits here. I think the guy in the room next door has a Golden Retriever, though, if that would help." And when in doubt, he defaulted to sarcastic. Because it pissed people off and people who were pissed off were more like to tell you everything you wanted to know.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could faintly see Usagi backing herself into the corner of the room. He would have thought it was impossible to wedge oneself into a corner as small as that one was, but she was somehow managing. Well, crap. They must have meant Usagi as the Rabbit. Somehow he got the feeling he was missing something in translation again, like Usagi mean "rabbit" or something.

"Give us the Rabbit, and no one will need to be hurt," Burly Number One repeated. "There is no need for this to be unpleasant."

"Unpleasant? You haven't seen unpleasant yet."

There wasn't going to be time to get his gun out of his bag. Taking the time to undo the strap and zipper to reach the bag's contents was going to be too long for what little time they had left here. This was going to call for more drastic measures.

This was going to be the first practical, combat testing of what it was he could do now. He would be lying if he said he wasn't terrified, but then he wasn't going to say any of what he was thinking aloud.

Burly Number One... He needed to be elsewhere. It took some focusing before he managed to wrap this extra sense of his around the body of the man in front of him, but the second he had hold of him, he _shoved_ with everything he had in him. Apparently it was a lot: Burly Number One was off his feet and through the window like he had been launched from a cannon. Duo... could live with that. That was a good end course for what he was trying to do.

Still, it was a lot hard than moving tools and towels around. He had foolishly suspected that smaller objects would be more difficult. They required more finesse—yes, that much was true—but the larger objects required strength that he had not known that he possessed. He had only moved one of the five, and already he felt like he had run a marathon. This... wasn't going to be easy.

Without taking his eyes off the remaining attackers, he kicked his bag back at Usagi. "There's a gun on the inside. Get it! We're going to need it." She didn't respond, but he could faintly hear her struggling with the strap and then tackling the zip. It shouldn't be more than a second.

He reached for the next one of the intruders, wrapping his power around this one in turn. It was a little easier, now that he knew what it was he was doing, but there were muscles he had not known he possessed that were protesting the movement... and most of them were inside his own brain. He was going to have to work on improving his fortitude in this area. This was almost too pitiful to be believed, especially for him. A moment later, he shoved again, sending Burly Number Two out the window as well, but without nearly the force he had been able to summon for Number One.

"Gun!" Usagi yelled, passing it quickly forward to him. Somehow he felt the need to be glad that she hadn't objected to it, but in a situation like this? Any weapon competently used would be a boon. They needed a few of those right about now.

He barely had one in the chamber before Burly Number Three was almost upon them. Giving the man a good mental shove was easier at that range that trying to find a good target to shoot. He didn't manage to throw him outside to join the others, but at least he was back on the other side of the bed again. That was some distance between them.

"Now." It was Burly Number One's voice that spoke all too calmly, commanding the others for something. To split like the Red Sea and let the man in the rear come forward? Why would they do something like that, unless...

"Usagi, down!" Even as he yelled the command, he was grabbing Usagi and yanking her down with him to the floor.

He had been expecting a hail of gunfire, maybe even a machine gun leftover from one of the armies that had long since disbanded in this new peace. He wasn't expecting fire to shoot forth from the other man's hand as he swept it across the breadth of the space. The entire small room caught fire quickly, blazing increasingly hot.

There was only one door, which was good from a defensive standpoint, yes, but not so great when they were trapped far from it with fire and bad guys between them and it. It looked like they had two immediate choices: roast alive or try to get through the invaders. Neither one was something he wanted to consider.

There had to be a third option. There had to be. They were not going to be killed or captured here. He wasn't going to allow it.

At his side, he could faintly hear Usagi whispering something. If he took a second to listen to what she was saying, she was repeating over and over, "I wish we were anywhere but here. I wish we were anywhere but here."

Well, in that case, it looked like using Usagi's powers to get out of here was going to be a bust. He didn't think that fire was going to be something he could just move... Although if he tried to create a back draft, maybe...

He fixed his gaze on the fire building around them, trying to figure out a way to wrap his powers around it. It leapt and jumped, making it almost impossible to catch. Almost. He managed to push at some of it, but it wasn't going to be enough. Through the crackle of the flames, he could hear someone shrieking: it sounded as though he had managed to catch one of their attackers in the back draft. That was a small something at least.

Burly Number Five, the firestarter guy, waved his hand in their general direction again. Flames shot out, racing towards them, moving much quicker than he could possibly hope to grab hold of them. This was not going to be good. There was no way out and no way away from the fire. They were going to...

The flames stopped at the edge of the bed, less than a foot away from them, held in place by what seemed like a silvery shield. A very quick look around showed the same shield all the way around them. It sparkled along its curved length, almost like a jewel. It was holding the fire back. He wasn't too sure it would be able to do the same for bullets though; it didn't look like that kind of shield. Still, he wasn't the one doing this. This was something well beyond what it was his newfound abilities could handle. This had to be Usagi.

He quickly glanced over his shoulder at her. Her eyes were wide and scared, but there was a distinctly determined cast to her face. And unless he was gravely mistaken, the weird locket she was always wearing looked like it was glowing. It wasn't reflecting the light of the fire. No, it looked like it was the same silvery shade as the shield.

Maybe they could use some of Usagi's abilities to get out of this after all. And when they did get out of this, they were going to have a long, long talk about what it was that she could and could not do.

Who knew how long that shield of hers would hold them safe? They needed some way to get out of here and fast.

They were backed up against the far wall. Calling up what the motel had looked like when they first checked in, it had seemed as though this would be nothing on the other side of this wall. If they could just get through it, they would be out of this room and hopefully home free. They just had to get through this wall. That was going to have to be his job.

"Usagi?" She whipped her head around to meet his eyes. "This is your doing?" He nodded at the shield.

She nodded in response. "I... I wanted something to protect us."

"Can you hold it for a few more minutes?"

She took a deep breath, drawing herself up straighter, and nodded again decisively. "I'll hold it as long as we need it. I promise. I'll do what I can to keep us safe."

It was hard to turn his back on the people attacking them. It was one of the hardest things he had ever had to do. But he had to trust in Usagi, that she would keep them safe. There was no other way to do this—and besides, he did trust her. He hadn't known her that, which made it a little odd, but he did trust her. Something about her did inspire trust in a person. And here he was: laying his life in the hands of that trust.

With his back nearly against her shield, he could actually hear the fire against it even more loudly, almost loud enough to drown out every other noise in the room. Again, almost.

He drew his focus down as narrow as he could: Usagi's breathing, his own breathing, and the wall between them and potential freedom. This was going to have to be a lot different than how he had been using his abilities. For starters, there was no way he could wrap his power through a wall; so far he had been using line of sight to see what he could of what he needed to move, and he couldn't see the other side of it. It was cinderblocks, so definitely an older bit of construction. He just needed to make a few of them move, enough for him and Usagi to get out.

He couldn't push them, so instead he just _shoved_. He shoved at it with everything he had left in himself to offer. For the longest and most impossible second, it felt as though it wasn't going to work. The mere thought was heartbreaking and demoralizing. The next second, though, there it was: he could feel the block in the center shift. He pushed harder on it, shoving at it with all his might.

The first brick moved then blew out the wall, flying to unseen places far behind them. The second it was out of place, ones all around it slid out of place, disappearing as they sailed back into the woods behind the motel. It would only take just a few more. Somehow he was making it work. That made the pain he was in, how badly his head was beginning to hurt, worth it. They would be out of here soon. He could collapse the minute they were to safety.

A warm liquid slid down his face, coming from his nose, and he wiped it absently away. He vaguely noted that it was blood. That probably wasn't a good side. In fact, he probably meant he was pushing himself miles too hard, too fast, to do too much. There wasn't any helping it today, however. Again, he promised himself plenty of time for rest once they were safe, with Heero, somewhere far away from here.

One more brick slid free, and that was it: that was a hole large enough for them to fit through, if they went one at a time. It would have to do. He was drained. He didn't think there was much else he could manage to do. His vision swam before his eyes already as it was.

Please, God, let Heero have heard all of this going on and be here. It wasn't too much to ask, was it?

"Go!" he yelled at Usagi. "Get out of here! I'm right behind you."

She shook her head. "I can't. If I move, then my shield moves with me. Go on."

Crap, she had a point. It galled him a bit to crawl through the hole first, but it had to be done...

And fuck, there were more of the burly guys on this side of the wall too. They must have surrounded the place, in a very literal sense of the word, before they came in at all.

He didn't have anything else left to give in the abilities front. As it was, it felt like he had seriously overused what he did have. There was the gun, though, and it felt like a solid, familiar weight in his hand right now.

It took him all of a second to note the positions of the guys on this side of the wall, calculate how many shots he had, and start firing. There was no goddamn cover out here, so all he could hope was that he could put a bullet through each one of them before Usagi was here too. There were only another six of them, in addition to the guys that had come into their room.

Whoever they were, they wanted Usagi bad. They must, to send this many guys after her. He didn't know any of them, even in passing, but he knew ex-military when he saw it. Even they weren't ex-military, they had at least been someone's private army, if they weren't still now. Why would someone hire this many guys to kidnap Usagi?

At least they hadn't tried to take her while she was still with Relena. He had no doubts that Relena's Preventer bodyguards were good; Une wouldn't let them near Relena if they weren't; but they weren't ex-Gundam pilots and they didn't have abilities like he and Heero had. That they had managed to stay this far ahead of these guys, while not even knowing that they were being chased, said something about that.

A second or two later, Usagi was through the hole as well. She looked like she was really out of breath. Part of that was probably from the heat of the fire still burning on the other side of the wall, but a lot of it was probably that shield of hers, he reckoned. Given how taxing his own abilities were for him, that had to have been exhausting for her. The white sundress she had been wearing was stained black in places with soot and was generally in a lot worse condition that it had been only a few minutes ago when she put it on. Relena definitely wasn't going to be getting that thing back; that much was for certain.

For that matter, at least these guys had waited to bust in until after they had both gotten dressed. Fighting naked wasn't exactly high on his to do list. Oh, he probably could do it, but he did _not_ want to. It just didn't seem cool.

He managed to place one more bullet in one more guy, hitting a little higher than center mass and putting a pretty massive hole in the guy's throat, before the gun clicked empty. He had had spare clips for it, but they were in his bag, which was back in the inferno that had once been their room. God damn it. Today, things were just damn determined not to go his way. When it rained, it poured, as the old saying went.

They wanted Usagi. She was who they were after. Why he didn't know, but there was absolutely no doubt in his mind that it wasn't to shake her hand and play nice. If someone wanted that, they never would have hired guys like these to come after her. No, whatever they wanted her for was _not_ going to be good.

And they were not going to get their hands on her, not while he was still able to do something about it. This was going to suck.

He reached out for his abilities one more time, wrapping them around her, and pushed. All he needed was for her to be away and pushing her as far as he could into the woods behind the motel would have to be enough. Hopefully she would be able to land someplace soft, but right now, that wasn't exactly a top priority. She would be far enough away that they wouldn't try to go after her, not with an inferno like this raging, with all the attention it was surely attracting from the community at large. Even now, he could hear sirens in the distance, though they were quickly getting closer and closer.

It felt like something in his brain literally broke as he pushed Usagi into the woods. Despite that, he kept pushing until he felt like she was a safe distance away. The second it felt like she was, he let go—and collapsed.

Faintly, before the darkness overcame him completely, he could hear their attackers talking:

"I see no sign of the Rabbit."

"The police are too close. We will have to leave without her and hope we can pick up her trail again."

"What about this guy?" He could faintly feel a toe nudging at his side.

"Bring him. He's got powers. Plus," a chuckle, "the Rabbit might come after him."

Well, damn.

The blackness swamped him, and that was the last thing he remembered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **16 July 2012**
> 
> Holy cow, people. Seriously, holy cow. I asked for 100 hits, and you guys delivered. In spades, even. I got to have my first ice cream on Saturday, and I guess I get to have my second tonight... since you've gotten me to 214 hits prior to this chapter going up. You guys are seriously, seriously awesome. Do we want to see how long we can keep it up? I'm all for ice cream, you know.
> 
> Thanks to ThoseRainyDays and angel313 for the reviews! ThoseRainyDays, please, if you happen to have any other Duo/Usagi/Heero stories (all together, not a triangle) or know where to find more, please let me know. I've been under the impression I'm the only one writing the pairing.
> 
> I'm part of the way through Chapter Sixteen... if it actually saved on my desktop, since it didn't save to my flash drive properly. In fact, none of Chapter Sixteen saved to the flash drive at all. So wish me luck that I don't have to completely rewrite an entire chapter. (Scratch that, I found an auto-saved file, so the chapter is saved! Next time less panicking and more frantic hunting?)
> 
> Anyway, freakout aside, see everyone next chapter. Later!
> 
> Apollymi


	13. Chapter Twelve

"Oww," she mumbled in complaint as she woke up. She felt… Actually she felt an awful lot like a piñata: black, blue, and bruised. And she was lying in the middle of a bush that was poking her in all sorts of uncomfortable places; she just _knew_ she was going to have a bruise across her butt from the branch she had landed on when… when…

Why was she in the middle of a bush in the middle of the woods anyway? It didn't seem like it was something she was wont to do on a regular basis.

Actually, no, she already _knew_ it wasn't something she enjoyed doing.

How weird was that, she thought to herself, as she carefully extracted herself from the bush and started dusting herself off: a bit more of her memory seemed to be back. She had faces to go with the names she had started to recall earlier: Mamo-chan, and Rei-chan, and Mako-chan, and Seiya-kun, and… There were others, but she would have to give them a little bit before she tried to push her brain to try to remember them as well. She couldn't wait to tell Duo about this…

Duo!

How could she have... No, really, how could she have forgotten what had been happening when she blacked out? The fight, Duo, the huge guys who wanted the Rabbit? How had all of that slipped out of her mind?

She was tempted to blame it less on the impromptu trip through the woods only to land headfirst in a bush and more on her own forgetful nature. Rei-chan had always had things to say about her on that matter. Plus, she had used the Ginzuishou. No, that was just an excuse. Ginzuishou or not, she had forgotten something that important, and she needed to find Duo. She needed to find him now, so they could go get Heero, and get out of here immediately.

It wasn't too hard to tell which way she had come from. Aside from the trail of broken branches leading in one certain direction, there was also an incredible heat coming from that same way. Through the trees, she could faintly see the fire still raging, presumably having spread from their room to the rest of the motel. It was apparently going to be difficult to put out. It was either that, or she had not be unconscious all that long. She wasn't too willing to lay a guess just yet.

Slowly, carefully, she picked her way back the direction she had apparently come, only to have to change paths part of the way there when it was apparently the woods were starting to catch as well. Each step was just a little harder than the one before. Unlike Duo, she hadn't had a chance to finish getting dressed, and the forest floor was not particularly kind to bare feet.

What she couldn't hear was the sound of more gunshots. Presumably those men who attacked them had fled already. If so, then that was at least one lucky break.

Maybe this was why Heero had been so adamant about staying on the move. Had he known someone was following them, or was this just how he lived: always worried about when the next attack would come, always anticipating it at every stop? She oddly found herself hoping that he had known they were being followed. She didn't want to think of her Heero as having to be so worried about an attack coming out of nowhere at any time.

Finally, there was a break in the woods, and she could see the motel. She had somehow ended up all the way down at the far end, not anywhere near where their room had been. Fire trucks, emergency vehicles, and police cars surround the place, even here on the forest side. It looked like it was all they could to keep it from spreading any further than it had already.

If the number of people milling around outside the place, most of them completely dressed and watching this like a spectator sport but some clinging to a few soot-covered belongings were any indication, then there had not been too many people staying in the motel aside from them. That was a small relief in that case. No one needed to get hurt on her account. Not the people she was coming to love, and certainly not innocent bystanders.

Speaking of which... She scanned the crowd, looking for two familiar faces, looking for someone with long hair pulled into a braid, looking for dark blue eyes. There was no sign of either of them. Where could they be?

"Miss?" a voice broke into her thoughts. A woman in a dark colored uniform was standing next to her, the letters EMS stenciled in large yellow font on her vest.

"Yes, can I help you?" she immediately asked. Without even thinking about it, she had switched back to Japanese. It felt easier on her brain right now, instead of trying to remember how to speak a language that she wasn't even sure how she had learned in the first place. Seeing the utterly confused look on the other woman's face, she sighed and translated for herself. She really needed to learn to remember that she wasn't in Japan anymore; Japanese was not the primary language where she was, and she was really very lucky that even Heero spoke it. "I'm sorry. Can I help with something?"

"You're injured, miss. I would like to have a look at you." She smiled coaxingly. "If nothing else, get you cleaned up and take care of your feet."

She glanced down at her feet and winced. They actually started to quit hurting a bit. While she had been walking, that might have been a good thing. Now that she had stopped, however, it probably wasn't. And they did look a bit rough.

"All right," she acquiesced. "But first... I was with two people, two men. One had long hair in a braid, and the other was wearing a green tank top and jeans. Have you seen either of them?"

The woman shook her head slowly. "I haven't. But we can find out if they've checked in with someone else once we get you taken care of."

It wasn't ideal, but it was something at least. She nodded her agreement and let the other woman lead her over to one of the emergency vehicles. It actually didn't take the woman—Lisa, once she inquired of a name—very long to take care of her. While there were cuts on her feet, they weren't bad enough to need more than bandages and some stern warnings about being careful walking on them; she had also been given a spare pair of someone's boots and told not to walk barefoot for a while, until they finished healing.

The rest of what she was willing to let Lisa look at were bruises and soot stains. It had to be pretty obvious to the other woman that she had been in the fire at some point, but at least she was tactfully not asking, not while Usagi was keeping her eyes open, scanning the growing crowd for any sign of Heero or Duo or anyone else she knew.

Finally a familiar mop of dark hair came into view. "Heero!" she called. Lisa put a firm hand on her shoulder to keep her from moving while she was working the boots on her feet as loosely as possible.

Blue eyes turned towards the sound of her voice. She could almost see the moment that he spotted her: his eyes went a tad wider, and his entire body seemed to sag in relief for just a split second. But then he was dashing across the parking lot to stop just outside of being in Lisa's way.

She shrugged off the other woman's hand and rushed into Heero's arms, wrapping herself tightly around him. "Thank goodness," she whispered.

Just like that, though, the events of the afternoon seemed to catch up with her. She dropped her arms from around him and instead buried her face against his shirt, bringing her hands up to cover her face. It… It wouldn't do to let the tears fall all over him.

"Usagi?" he asked, his voice soft and almost concerned. From as long as she had known him, this might have been the most concern she had seen from him. "Are you crying?"

Unable to stop herself, she nods. "Yes."

"Why?"

"Duo…"

"You know I wasn't actually done with you," Lisa cut in, steering her away from Heero to sit back down where she had been. Maybe trying to do even this much was beyond her now. Actually it felt like everything was a bit beyond her right now.

"Are you all right?" He sounded... detached, she supposed, and wanted to wrap her arms around him. The second she was released from Lisa's care, she intended to do just that.

"I will be. It's mostly just some cuts and bruises."

She could see him rake a critical eye over her, obviously taking in the state she was in, and evaluating what he could see against her words. There was absolutely no chance he believed a word she was saying, even if it was mostly the truth. "And Duo?" he finally asked instead.

And just like that, it felt as though her heart had leapt up into her throat. She had been so hoping that he would show up with Heero. If he hadn't, though...

She gave a half glance over at Lisa and then switched to their shared native language. "I haven't seen him since I woke up. These men showed up and attacked us. One of them could create fire, and well..." She gestured at the motel as it burned merrily on. "We got out, but there were more of the same guys in the back. I remember Duo shooting at them, and then he _moved_ me." She tried her best to place enough special emphasis on that word, moved, so that maybe Heero would know what she meant. "Next thing I knew, I was waking up in the middle of the forest."

"Did they say what they were after?"

She swallowed hard against the pain rising from her chest. "Me. They were looking for me. Called me 'the Rabbit'. They didn't say why they were looking for me, but..." She sighed deeply. "There really can only be one reason, right? They want me to grant some kind of wish, right?"

"It makes sense."

"Do you..." She had to swallow again, unable to continue speaking otherwise. "Do you think that's why they took Duo? To make me come to them?"

"It makes sense" was again all he said, and again she felt like she was choking.

Lisa looked up at her in alarm, one hand apparently already moving for an oxygen mask, before Usagi shook her head and switched back to English. "I'm all right." She tried on a smile. It was weak, barely able to hold itself up, but it was nonetheless a smile. "I'm okay, I promise."

"If you feel up to it, you're free to get out of here. The police might want to take a statement from you," the other woman offered her a smile in return, "just as a witness, I promise."

She nodded. "Of course. Thank you." Climbing carefully to her feet, she tested out her balance in the hugely oversized work boots and found her feet tender and a bit sore but definitely useable. She wasn't about to give up on any of this so soon anyway, hurt or not. Something told her that she had been hurt a whole lot worse over the years.

Cautiously, she followed Heero away from the emergency vehicle. Come to think of it, she didn't see the car they had been using either. Had those guys taken it? Or, no, wait, Heero would have taken it into town to get his research done and to get them all lunch. So where was it? Had he come all the way back here without it?

"Where were you, Heero?" she heard herself ask once they were on the far side of the road from the burning motel and the growing crowd of people. Almost immediately, she winced though. That had accidentally come out a lot more accusatory than she had actually meant it. There was nothing in the relationship guidelines that he had to stay with them every minute of every day. "I'm sorry. I didn't— I didn't mean it like that, Heero. I—"

"I heard about people talking about the fire in town," he commented. "The car wouldn't start when I got out to it, though. Someone had helpfully removed the sparkplugs and the battery."

That... wasn't good. That meant a lot of things, not the least of which being that they knew the three of them had separated and they had actively tried to keep them that way.

"What kind of people would do something like this?" she choked out. Really, though, she already knew. She had been around long enough to meet plenty of people who would do all kinds of horrible things to get whatever it was they wanted. It wasn't always aliens and rogue senshi and invaders from another time. Sometimes the ones you really had to watch out for were plain people. They could be just as dangerous... and sometimes more so.

"No one you want to think too much about, Usagi," Heero returned at length. "Sometimes human beings are the biggest monsters on this planet."

And that was a bit weird. It was like he was finishing her thoughts, speaking aloud the things she was still keeping to herself. While she wouldn't put anything past Heero, it was still more than a bit unnerving.

What in the world had he been researching? She could understand him having to get away to get in a proper frame of mind for that; she would imagine that she and Duo could be quite distracting to serious pursuits, after all; but just what was it that he had been trying to find out information on?

"Heero?" It was a question that she wasn't really sure she wanted an answer to, but it was also one that she had to ask. She didn't want it, but she had to know the answer.

He shook his head. "I'll tell you later. It's... deep, I guess is the word."

She nodded. "All right." It was a reprieve, and that was more than good enough for right now.

There was silence for a long moment before Heero suddenly let out a growl and punched his fist into a tree next to him. "Damn it! I knew this was coming. I knew it, and I didn't do anything about it."

Her breath caught in her throat, and for a long few minutes, she didn't dare try to breathe. "Did you know it would be today?"

He shook his head again slightly. "I didn't know it would be today, but I knew it was coming. I knew it would be a day you were wearing that dress and Duo wouldn't be here and it would be a goddamn inferno for some reason."

Oh God... Her poor Heero... _Their_ poor Heero... "Why didn't you say anything?" she asked, her voice small and cautious, doing her best to make sure he knew she wasn't laying any sort of blame here. It was nothing more than a question.

"I didn't want to change anything and risk making it worse." And that tallied with things that Rei-chan had said to her over the years about her own visions. Sometimes even talking about them could change things about them. Given Heero's distinctly pessimistic nature, she could see why he would be worried about making things worse.

She nodded. "That makes sense."

"It..." He paused, wiping sweat from his brow with the same hand he had just nearly put through a tree, barely even glancing down at the pitiful state it was in. She winced tightly looking at it herself, frankly tempted to go find Lisa again and have her set it; it looked terrible, bluntly phrased. "It didn't seem real, I guess. I've been having dreams that have come true all along for the last several weeks, but I just couldn't imagine someone taking Duo, someone being able to make him go somewhere against his will. It just didn't seem possible."

"I think," she hazarded, again speaking very carefully, though this time it was because she was not completely certain of her facts, "that the only reason they were able to take him was because he had worn himself out. I know he managed to physically move at least two really big guys and keep the fire from touching us _and_ make us an exit from the room, all by using his abilities. It looked like it was a huge strain on him." She broke off, wincing sharply in a vain attempt to keep the tears at bay. It was all her fault and now Duo was paying the price for it. "And then, once we were outside, he shot some of those guys and then threw me into the forest. And all the while, I was too damn useless to do anything more than hold a shield in place. I'm sorry, Heero. I— It's my fault they took him."

There were apparently ways that Usagi was very like he himself was. Apparently she shared the tendency he had to lay all the blame on herself. And apparently it was a great deal more difficult to see her blame herself than it was to apply the same feelings to himself.

"I don't think Duo would think that, Usagi," he commented carefully. "I know he's vehemently against me saying anything of like about myself. I can't imagine that he would say any differently with you."

Slowly, silvery tears began to slide down her face, each one slightly larger than the one before. Before long, it was impossible to say that she wasn't crying. "I know. I _know_ that, Heero. But that doesn't change the fact that they were after me or that they probably took Duo because of me. I-" She took a deep, shaky breath clearly trying to rein in her emotions, but also just as clearly, she was failing. "I never wanted anyone else to get hurt because of me, Heero. That's why I made the wish. That's why I came here. No one else need be hurt because of idiot Usagi."

It should almost be distracting how she switched back to Japanese for part of that conversation, at least enough of it to insult herself. "You're a lot of things, Usagi, but you are not an idiot," he finally decided to reassure her with. It was a bit weak, yes, but it worked. Or it would have worked if she wasn't still crying.

"No one else is going to be hurt because of me ever again," she declared decisively, like she could just say it and it would be. Of course, given what it was she could do, maybe it would just happen. It seemed impossible, but that didn't mean anything.

After all, they had left impossible behind days ago.

"Usagi..." He wasn't too sure what it was he was about to say. Whatever it was, he cut himself off abruptly as she seized his hand, the one he had thoughtlessly hit a tree with, and held it lightly to her chest, just over her locket.

"I'm not going to let anyone else be hurt," she whispered. There was brilliant silver flash for just a split second, just long enough to almost see, but then it faded away again, as if it was nothing more than an illusion.

An illusion would not have his hand back in perfect condition again, though. This was new. Just what powers was it that Usagi had? They seemed to be growing by leaps and bounds, like she got more abilities the more of her memories she got back. That... didn't seem possible, and yet... And yet here was the proof.

"Usagi..." he whispered again, breaking her hold on his hand to instead wrap both arms around her, pulling her close to him.

It seemed a bit odd, perhaps, that he was holding her just as tightly as she had done to him only a few hours ago. Or perhaps it wasn't odd. Perhaps it was more like a circle or something. Symmetry seemed an appropriate word.

"Please, Heero," she whispered brokenly into his shirt, "I can't lose anybody else. I can't lose Duo. We have to find a way to get him back." She leaned back, slowly taking a small step away from him and wiping inelegantly at her face as she tried to scrub the tears away. "We have to do something, Heero. We have to get him back."

On that, they were in agreement. There was no way in hell he was going to let anyone keep Duo away from them. If he had to scour the earth, the colonies, and hell itself to find where they had taken him, he would do it. No one was taking their Duo away from them.

"We'll get Duo back," he promised intensely. The words came out fiercely, but that was just as well, because he meant them as fiercely as he said them, perhaps even more so. He took a deep breath, trying to keep his voice steady. "If they've so much as harmed him, I'll…"

"You're not the only one," Usagi returned just as emotionally.

He had been right when he first saw this in the dream: he was trying to do more to convince himself than Usagi. Honestly, he needed more reassuring on the fact than Usagi seemed to. "We'll get him back."

"I know." She sounded so damn sure too. "We have one major advantage here, as I see it."

"What's that?"

"You dreamed about this, remember?"

How had she known about that? He hadn't told her anything about the dreams, just that he had them. But then, she had apparently known someone else who could do something similar to what he did. Maybe that allowed her to draw her own conclusion. To say nothing of his and Duo's conversation just before he confessed to being able to see the future. Okay, yes, it made sense how she would be able to figure it out. Still, just to be safe… "How did you know?"

She shrugged slightly, pacing out a slight lap. "You said a feeling of doom last night. I can't think of anything more like that than someone taking Duo."

"True," he admitted. Sweat dripped into his eyes, and he wiped at it absentmindedly.

Across from him, Usagi looked angry but determined. Tears still clung to the corners of her eyes, but somehow that didn't make her seem sad, only angry. He wouldn't want to be the people who took Duo right now, he thought absently.

"When you dreamed about this, Heero," she asked, her voice commanding, "what did you see? Was there anything we can use to get Duo back?"

As much as he didn't want to, he shook his head. "I didn't see who took him. I never saw what happened." Even now, even though he had dreamed all of this before it happened, it still tasted bitterly like failure.

A warm hand touched his face, stroking lightly down his cheek until he was willing and able to meet her eyes. "You tried, Heero. That's what matters. We'll just have to figure it out on our own."

"We will find him," he whispered again. He was like a mantra now. Maybe if he said it enough, he would actually be able to believe it. Right now, though, that was very much not the case.

Usagi nodded in easy agreement, still tracing her fingers against his cheeks. "We will," she agreed, "and whoever took him will regret it. We'll make sure of it."

He snorted lightly. "Duo is probably already making them regret it." No matter that it had probably been less than an hour or two; he had no doubt that Duo was already making those people's lives miserable.

He shouldn't have left the motel. It had been circulating around his mind since he heard the first news report while in that diner ordering lunch to bring back for the three of them: that the motel outside town was on fire, no idea on the cause, no idea on survivors. He should have been there. He should have told Duo or Usagi just what he had felt coming before it got here. But most of all, he should have been there with them.

This was his fault.

"Heero…" Usagi's voice was stern, and he couldn't help but look up guiltily at her. "Don't blame yourself. It's no one's fault but the bastards who took Duo. And we're going to make them pay for it. Remember that, Heero. It's the bastards' fault."

"I'll keep that in mind," he promised. It was absentminded at best. Right now he couldn't swear not to blame himself for any of this. It would be too much like lying, and he wouldn't—couldn't—do that right now.

"That's all I ask," she whispered. She leaned forward, pressing a lingering kiss to his lips. It was completely chaste, though there was a faint taste of her desperation to it, and she could probably taste his own, he mused to himself, even as he wrapped his arms around her.

It didn't feel right, he thought faintly. It didn't feel quite right without Duo here. The woman in his arms felt the same as she did only a few hours ago, and he felt the same as he did when he kissed her then… but it didn't feel right—no, not 'not right', but too different—without their third.

It was too different to think of even so much as deepening the kiss without Duo here, no matter how much they both might have needed this for comfort. They… They…

"We need Duo," Usagi whispered against his lips. "We need Duo to complete us."

With a sigh, he dropped his head on her shoulder. Almost immediately, her arms wrapped tightly around him, holding him as close to her body as possible with a strength that belies her small frame. He imagined that he was holding her just as tightly. He should have been making an effort to ease his hold, given his own amazing strength, but he couldn't, probably for much the same reason as Usagi hadn't let go of him.

"I miss Duo," Usagi whispered into his hair. Her voice shook slightly, but tears didn't seem likely to be coming again. "I want him back here with us right now."

It took him a moment to recover himself enough to whisper in reply, "I… We'll get him back."

And there would be no helping the people who took Duo from them. He would kill them if he could get his hands on them; he would not hold himself responsible for what he would do.

And who knew what Usagi would do? Given what they figured out about what else she could do, it could go so many ways…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **23 July 2012**
> 
>  
> 
> So I was waiting on 100 hits before I uploaded this chapter. This way, I get a treat and you get a treat, so it all works out well. I might go with that from here on out.
> 
> It's been a very eventful week or so, and thus I haven't gotten as far on this as I wanted. I actually wanted to be done Friday the 20th. I'm thinking now that I'll be done by this Wednesday the 25th, if not a little sooner. I've really been enjoying this story, especially from here on out, and I'm thinking I might come back eventually and play in this 'verse again.
> 
> Before I do that, though, I will need to finish Betrueger. I've been promising that to people nearly as long as I've been promising Belladonna's completion.
> 
> Anyway, see you in 100 hits and the next chapter! Later!
> 
> ~Apollymi


	14. Chapter Thirteen

In the end, despite everything he had seen in all those dreams of his, they ended up staying at the motel for a few hours, watching as it burned to the ground and keeping an eye out for Duo. It had been futile, of course, but it had been worth a shot. Anything towards finding Duo was worth a shot, as far as she was concerned.

She wasn't too sure how, but they had managed to avoid having to give statements to the police about what had happened. She really was uncertain as to how they had gotten away with it, because there was no way anyone could look at her and not be able to tell that she had been in the motel: she looked particularly bedraggled, still covered in soot with more than a few bandages adorning various parts of her anatomy, in addition to the ones no one would be able to see on her feet beneath the boots.

Even the EMS worker, Lisa, who had actually done the bandaging up on her, seemed unable to see or recognize her when the other woman looked her way. It was bizarre to say the least. She was pretty willing to give the Ginzuishou credit for that: her heart might have been conflicted on a great many things right now, but she was definitely certain that she wanted all these strangers to just leave her alone. She wanted her Heero and her Duo, and the rest of the world could go hang for all she cared.

Not to say that she didn't care about the rest of the world, because in a way she did, but to her, right now, her two lovers were much more important than anyone else.

Lovers... Wow... That made it sound completely tawdry, like all any of them were interested in was sex, and that couldn't be further from the truth, at least not as far as she was concerned. It was very weird to her, since she had only known them a few days now and yet she had... with both of them... at the same time... And she didn't regret it in the least. She didn't regret making love with them. But she seriously needed a better word than 'lovers'. This was going to take some brain power that she wasn't too sure she had to spare right now.

Once it had become clear that Duo wasn't going to magically reappear at the motel, she and Heero had begun the long trek into the nearest town, where Heero had left the car in his urgency to get back to them before anything happened. It hadn't helped; those people had still taken Duo, and there hadn't been anything either of them could do about it; but she could definitely understand feeling as though running the several miles would be quicker than waiting for a ride or trying to fix the car first. Heero assured her that it was a relatively simple fix, and the car would be running again by morning. Sparkplugs and a new battery, if she was remembering correctly.

It had been a long, tortuous walk for her, her feet hurting more and more every step of the way, but there was really no way around it. She wasn't going to let Heero out of her sight, and she didn't think that he was going to do the same either. So she had gritted her teeth and marched on. It was about eight or so kilometers, but it had felt forever long nonetheless. It could have been worse, though. It could have been a lot worse.

The car was still parked in front of the diner Heero had been at when he first heard what was happening back at the motel, but there wasn't much point in trying to move it, not right now, not until they had it fixed. So instead, they walked next door to the diner and got a room at the hotel instead.

It was much nicer than the motel, she thought wearily, and that was probably why they hadn't stayed there when it was the three of them: this was the kind of place where the staff was likely to remember the patrons, which was more attention than they had wanted. It was still more than they wanted, but it wasn't like there were a lot of other choices. This town had been a layover in their journey, a place they had been planning to stay a night, if at all.

Actually they hadn't been planning on staying in this town to begin with. Construction on the highway had delayed them more than they had anticipated, and so had necessitated a stop here. It was weird to her, then, that this was the town that those men caught up with them. Why here? And how long had they been following them? Or following just her, if that was indeed the case.

She was too tired for much in depth thinking. She had been assured over and over through the years by plenty of people that it was not exactly her strong suite anyway. Fighting, crying, and being too lazy for words, those were her strong suits.

'Usagi...' a voice very much like Rei-chan's scolded her from the very back of her thoughts. 'Don't think like that. You have to be strong and be positive to get through this, to get your man back.'

God, she really missed Rei-chan, now that she remembered who Rei-chan was and what the Senshi of Fire had meant to her. If she had had to say that one person had been her best friend, even despite all their arguing and fights and everything, she would have said Rei-chan. Ami-chan might have been her first friend among the Senshi, Mako-chan might have been her fierce protector, and Minako-chan might have been her twin and sister in everything but blood, but Rei-chan had been her best friend.

She missed her Senshi: the Inners and the Outers. It was weird. She might not have the clearest of memories of all of them, but she knew she missed them. She missed Setsuna-san's cryptic nature. She missed Haruka-san's brashness. She even missed Michiru-san's aloofness. She missed Hotaru-chan's quiet sageness and how the youngest Senshi had been so good for ChibiUsa.

And oh God... ChibiUsa... It had taken the thought of Saturn to bring the beginnings of a memory of her future daughter back, but once it was back, it was with a vengeance. How could she have forgotten ChibiUsa?

"Usagi?" Heero asked from in front of her. She looked up then blinked and looked around. She had been so distracted, so intent on just putting one foot in front of the other, for so long she hadn't even realized that they were in a room. Amazingly, it looked like it was fully twice the size of the room in the motel. She wasn't sure if she liked that or not. It had been very... cozy in a way, up until the end when there was no way out of it.

"Yeah?" she returned.

"Are you all right?"

She assessed herself quickly and nodded. "I'm all right." She paused, relenting to the disbelieving look on his face. "I will be all right. I just need some rest."

"You looked sad."

"I was just... remembering," she finally admitted. It was not an easy confession to make, but it actually felt pretty good to have it out. Confession was supposed to be good for the soul after all. That was what the priests in the movies always said, after all. "I was just remembering things that are never going to happen now."

"I don't think I follow."

She shrugged. "Pretty much, magic and time travel, Heero. Sure you want to know?" He hadn't seemed too receptive the idea of the former, and she was betting that the latter was equally unappealing to him.

"No, not at all, but," he paused, swallowing back what appeared to be nervousness, though it certainly didn't show on his face or in his voice, "if you need to tell it, I'll listen."

Given his previous reaction, it was a pretty huge offer. It would have been stupid of her to turn it down. All the same, though, she offered him an out right at the beginning. "If any of this gets too weird, Heero, let me know and I'll stop."

"It got past too weird a few weeks ago," she sent him a severe look, "but I will let you know. Why don't you go ahead and sit down first, though?" Tactfully, he didn't say anything about how exhausted she must look. She was actually surprised that a nice hotel like this had let her in the door in the first place.

"If I sit down, I'm not sure I'm going to get back up again tonight," she admitted.

"Sit down, Usagi." Despite the phrasing, it was more of a request than an order. She appreciated that. It couldn't be the easiest thing in the world for Heero, with all of this going on, to try to focus on being polite. Slowly, painfully, she sank down on the bed, eyeing the boots on her feet with disgust. She didn't want to go to sleep with those things on; Lisa had actually instructed her not to; but she also didn't want to think too heavily about trying to remove them either. Thankfully, though, Heero seemed to recognize the look on her face. "Do you need help getting those shoes off?"

She nodded and braced herself. Clearly, he had some experience with getting around injuries, even relatively minor ones like these. Compared to some she had received over the years of fighting, these were pretty minor, but they were annoying and uncomfortable. Plus she had had no choice but to walk on them for longer than she wanted to think of. Heero, though, was very cautious with removing them, and it only hurt a little bit.

She snorted her amusement as Heero set the second one down beside its mate and turned his attention to the bandages on her feet. "Remind me to never go barefoot ever again if I can help it."

"So what happened?"

She shrugged. "I didn't have my shoes on when we broke out of the room, then Duo tossed me in the forest to keep those guys from finding me. It was a long walk back." That was the simplest explanation.

He nodded, as if it all made perfect sense to him. Well, that was good. It didn't make a lot of sense to her. Her whole life had been weird from the time she was fourteen and first became Sailor Moon, and all of this was weird to her.

"So did you want to talk about what was upsetting you before?" She had the distinct feeling that, if he allowed any emotion to enter his voice, it would be nervousness. This didn't seem like the conversation he would normally initiate. For that matter, it wasn't one she would have expected from any of the guys she knew or had known. Maybe Seiya-kun, but she wasn't too sure that that counted.

"I'm starting to remember a lot more. It started coming back to me when those men attacked us, and there was more back when I woke up in the forest. It's not everything, but it's more. I was just remembering someone I knew back then, someone who was supposed to be from my future. I think that would be the past now, so I guess... I doubt she was ever born now, with whatever happened that brought me here."

"You don't remember what happened?" he asked as he finished unwinding the bandages. The small cuts on her feet seemed to have made the long trek relatively okay, so that was good if nothing else. She still wasn't looking too forward to seeing all the bruises that no doubt littered her body. "Nothing at all?"

She shook her head slowly. "I remember wings and blackness. I remember everyone I knew dying, one after the other after the other. But what exactly was the final trigger, what sent me here, I don't remember yet." And she wasn't too sure she wanted to. As it stood right now, she remembered it being down to her, the Starlights, and Galaxia... and something with a sword... but after that was a total blank. She had watched all of her own Senshi die; she didn't want to relive the deaths of the Starlights too.

Had Galaxia won? Was that what had happened? No, that didn't make sense. Galaxia wanted to take over the universe. If they hadn't stopped her somehow, if she had succeeded, even this time would probably still be affected by the mad former Senshi. It didn't make sense. All the same, though, she wasn't pushing her mind for anything else right now. For the moment, she was going to be content in the memories she had recovered.

Even if the memories were painful, they were better than having none at all, she supposed. When she woke up, there had been his horrible empty blackness where her past, her entire life, should have been. In that hospital and then with Relena-san, she had worried that she was never going to get her life back. Now she was starting to, in both small and huge chunks, and she almost wished she didn't remember. Almost. They were painful, but they were pieces of her life. She would take the good with the bad.

Besides, in addition to all the fights and battles and monsters, she remembered good times: laughing with Minako-chan, eating Mako-chan's cooking, visiting Rei-chan at the temple, Ami-chan helping her study to get into high school...

Funny. Mamo-chan had come easily back into her thoughts, but now she didn't seem to be able to hold him there. She had the faint memory of the love they had shared, and it was a bittersweet memory, thanks to the past and future that was always intruding. But it wasn't the all-consuming love it had been when they had been together. Instead, it felt like time had faded it, so that she could look back on it with fondness. She didn't miss it and all the destiny that came with it.

It was because she was falling in love again, she decided to herself. She wasn't quite willing to say that out loud just yet, though. Not until they had Duo back with them.

"Usagi?" Heero's voice cut through her thoughts.

She shook her head slightly to clear it and refocused her attention on him. "Yes, Heero?"

"Does the name 'Sailor Moon' mean anything to you?"

Now that was funny: she had always heard people talk about feeling the blood drain from their faces, but she had never experienced it before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **27 July 2012**
> 
> Okay, so the story is done. I was holding off on posting until I got 100 hits... but mostly I'm ready to get this chapter up... so here you go.
> 
> Apollymi


	15. Chapter Fourteen

"Where did you hear that name, Heero?" Usagi whispered. Her voice shook, and her eyes were wide. She had actually gone pale at the name, and he had weirdly experienced the brief urge to take the question back. Instead, though, he left it out there.

"Duo mentioned it. It's something from a kids' story, but it was about your time, when you came from." And that was never going to stop being weird to think, much less say aloud. "Does it mean something to you?"

She bit her lip, glancing away from him for a brief moment before she sighed and turned back to him, her face wan and her voice bitter. "I've heard of Sailor Moon. She was supposed to be the hero of Tokyo and defender of the Earth. She wasn't very good at it."

He felt both eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. Of all the answers he had been expecting, this had not been one of them. "So she was a real person then?"

Usagi nodded slowly. "Real enough, if incompetent, brash, and unable to help her friends when they needed it most." She sighed heavily. "When they needed her most."

There was no diplomatic way to say this, but when had diplomacy ever been his strong suit? This was as close to it as he got, now, hinting around something he wasn't sure he was ready to say just yet. "It sounds like you knew her."

Usagi nodded again. "I knew her. I knew her well enough to be disappointed in her for letting happen... whatever it was that happened." She shook her head hard, wincing her eyes tightly shut as if to ward off tears again. Frankly, he really hoped that she was successful. He wasn't too good with tears. "I can't _remember_." Her voice broke harshly in the middle of the word, and she wrapped her arms tightly around herself, fingers gripping her arms so tightly that the skin was turning white around them. "They were all dying, then there was only Sailor Moon and a few others left, and Galaxia wanted to take over and destroy the _universe_ , but I can't remember what happened next. Of all the things I can't remember, why did it have to be that?" But then she seemed to reverse her own thoughts as she shook her head again desperately. "I don't want to know the rest. What I do remember, with all the fighting and so many people I cared for dying, I don't want to see what happens after that."

What in the world was he supposed to be doing now? _Follow your emotions,_ said that annoying voice in his head that popped up from time to time in emotionally stressful times. 'Just hold her and listen if she needs it,' replied another one, one that sounded amazingly like Duo. Duo usually gave pretty good advice, so he went with that one, climbing up on the bed and wrapping his arms around her. She buried her face in his shirt, but she wasn't crying. In fact, it was more like she was hiding: from him, from herself, from her past, and maybe even from the world itself.

So Sailor Moon was real. Duo's children's story had actually been true-or at least had some elements of truth to it. It sounded like Sailor Moon had indeed fought evil, and she may have even had friends along to help her. And it sounded like the end of the story was true too: that one day, Sailor Moon and her band had met an evil they could not defeat, Galaxia, if he was following Usagi's story correctly.

But the ending... There was no way to know if the ending was correct or even if there was one yet. Because according to what little he had been able to find in his research, Sailor Moon and the Sailor Senshi had all disappeared when the dome fell in Tokyo.

He couldn't believe he was even thinking about asking this, but he had to know. "Usagi?" She didn't budge and didn't say a single word, but he did get the feeling she was paying close attention to his words. That was something, he supposed. "Were you Sailor Moon?"

At that, she pushed away, looking all too ready to climb to her feet. Whether it was to leave or to pace or even just to hide in the bathroom, it was something he shouldn't let her do. He had promised himself that he and Usagi would be together when they got Duo back, so she wasn't allowed to leave. He had seen the condition her feet were in-and how she hadn't said anything the entire walk back into town, he had no idea-so she really shouldn't be pacing. And he knew for a fact that it was bad to try to hide from the painful parts of your own past; once you started that, it was nearly impossible to stop hiding, to stop running.

So instead, he wrapped both arms around her anew and pulled her close to him. "There is no right or wrong answer here, Usagi," he stated plainly, doing everything in his power to keep his voice level and calm. Almost without thought, he started running a hand over her hair; he still couldn't get over how incredibly soft it was; and to his relief, she seemed to respond to the motion, relaxing slowly into his arms. "There is no right or wrong answer," he repeated. "In fact, you don't even have to answer, not unless you want to."

Part of him actually wanted to keep rambling on, but he held that bit of himself firmly in check. He had an idea why that urge had hit him. It was too quiet here without Duo. He missed the other man being here, filling up the silences before they got to be a bit too long and helping to bridge the gaps in this relationship.

"I..." Usagi sounded... He couldn't put a word to how she sounded. Lost? Detached? Miserable? Any one of them worked, but none of them fit. Eloquence like that wasn't his strong point either. "Once upon a time, I was known as Sailor Moon."

Never once in a thousand years would he ever have expected to get an affirmative answer to that question. He had only known about Sailor Moon for a day, maybe even less than that, but between what Duo had told him and what his own research had turned up, the entire thing seemed too fantastical to be real. Suddenly, the words Usagi had said some time before, about feathers and magic and the world's ending, made a whole lot more sense.

"So all those old stories are true then?" He actually hadn't meant to say that out loud, but those words had actually slipped from him. After that, there was no taking them back-and he wasn't sure he wanted to anyway.

"I don't know what stories you've heard, Heero." She plucked at the duvet on the bed listlessly. "There were a lot of very unusual things that my friends and I did or fought or even were. You'll have to be more specific."

Given her previous reactions, he wasn't about to ask her too much else about it. He also wasn't going to tell her much of what he had been able to find. "I guess that's how you know someone who can see the future."

She looked like she wanted to say something, maybe correct his tense, but she didn't. Instead, she explained quietly, "Rei-chan, or Mars, the Senshi of Fire. She could see small glimpses of the future, though she was better at telling if evil was coming or detecting it. Her power wasn't like yours, Heero, but it did make hearing about yours easier. Duo's..." She shrugged.

"He always has to be unique," he deadpanned.

"Oh, so we have more unusual things to look forward to." It could have come out bitter. He thought, if he had said it, then it probably would have. It didn't sound that way with Usagi, though. Maybe she was more interested in the unusual and fun things they could do with Duo and his abilities and everything else about him. They just had to get him back, and they would, if he had any say in the matter-and he liked to think that he did.

"Oh, plenty more. Duo isn't happy unless he's being different than everyone else."

"I'll bear that in mind," she commented. She sounded better. That was a good thing, as far as he was concerned. "You've known Duo a long time, haven't you?"

"Two years, give or take," he replied. How one went about measuring time in a war-in two wars-was difficult at best. But maybe Usagi knew something about that. He was coming to suspect that much anyway. "The first time we met, he shot me."

At that, Usagi sat up straight to stare down at him in very obvious and very frank disbelief. "What?!" It wasn't quite a shriek, but it wasn't too far from it.

"I was holding a gun on Relena-and I was trying to blow up... some things." This was something he wasn't too sure he wanted to get into. So why had he brought up the subject to begin with? He needed to back out of it as quickly as he possibly could. How would Duo put this? "One thing led to another, and he shot me. But he eventually broke me out of the hospital where I was being held."

Twin arms entwined themselves around his waist. "Oh, Heero..."

It didn't seem like she was going to continue, so he pressed on. "I guess I paid him back by stealing parts from his Gundam." And he wasn't going to mention setting his own leg. That always got the most grossed out expressions from Duo, and he didn't want to see what it would do to Usagi. "I was a little surprised he was willing to work with me after that, much less try so hard to... be my friend." The words seemed inadequate for the effort Duo had put into him over the years, but it would have to do.

"I'm sure there's never a day that goes by that Duo isn't glad he's your friend, Heero."

And that was awfully mushy, even for Usagi. He wasn't going to say anything about it, though, in part because he didn't want to find out what other sappy thing she might be holding onto to say. More than that, though, he didn't want to admit that she had cut pretty close to something that always worried him: the possibility that one day Duo might realize he wasn't worth the effort and would leave him for good. So he pushed at Duo: leaving whenever the other man found him, ignoring the flirting that had gone on for years, refusing to let himself get any closer to the other man for when the inevitable finally happened.

And now it had. It wasn't quite like he had pictured it, but Duo was indeed gone from him. And it felt just as crippling as he had feared it would. But at least this time he wasn't alone, not like he had always thought he would be.

"Heero." Usagi's voice cut through his thoughts, her voice severe. "I can feel you thinking dark thoughts from here. Stop it. We will get Duo back, and then we aren't going to let him out of our sight again for at least a month." She paused. "Or more like a year. Okay, forever. But we _are_ going to get him back, and if I have to chain him to a bed to make sure no one else takes him, I will." She poked his side viciously, and he was surprised enough by it that he had to squirm away a bit. "And if I have to poke you until you're happy, don't think I won't do that either, Heero."

"You sound so certain about this, Usagi. What if..." He didn't want to even think of it, but it was a possibility. "What if we can't pick up their trail and find where they've taken Duo?"

"They want me. They'll make certain that I can find my way to them."

"And if they just grab you like they did Duo?"

She sighed and poked his side again. "Then I give you full permission to stick a tracking device on me or something. As long as I get to do the same to you. We _will_ find them. We will get Duo back. I promise, Heero." She pulled her tight against her body again. "I promise you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **03 August 2012**
> 
> Whoops... Guess what I forgot to do yesterday? Sorry!
> 
> So, the story is finished. I'm uploading a new chapter per 50 hits.
> 
> I'm also participating in the August Edition of Camp NaNoWriMo, with another crossover story. Betrueger fans, please, bear with me: the story is being unbearably difficult. My muse has departed, and I'm struggling to get words in for you guys.
> 
> And that's about it.
> 
> See you next chapter!  
> Apollymi


	16. Chapter Fifteen

He had been trying to force himself to dream for the past two nights, and yet nothing was coming of it. Of course, of the three of them, he would get the ability with a mind of its own, completely unwilling to something useful, like helping them find Duo before something _worse_ happened to him. If there was anyone out there who could go from kidnapped to worse, after all, it was Duo, and he wasn't going to let that happened. _They_ weren't going to let that happen.

Usagi looked like she was perfectly willing to start interrogating random people on the street by the end of the first full day since Duo had been taken. Now, now that another day after had passed that he was halfway surprised that she was still in the hotel room and not going door to door, like she had mentioned in a fit of annoyance yesterday. He was a little surprised he wasn't doing the same.

Honestly, though, he was about going out of his mind in worry. He would have thought the attackers would have contacted them by now. If they wanted Usagi for something, then why wait to try again? They had the perfect way to make sure that either of them would behave perfectly.

Unless Duo...

He slammed the brakes on that train of thought hard. Duo was alive. They had no reason to think otherwise (except the kidnappers' annoying resistance to contacting them), and he wasn't going to let himself think otherwise.

Besides, if he didn't, Usagi would probably beat or berate him within an inch of his life. She was not accepting any ideas other than Duo being alive. That was good thinking, a distant part of his mind analytically thought: they would fight harder and with more emotion if they were fighting for a living lover than a dead one.

Sometimes he actually really almost hated that analytical part of his mind; he didn't need to be analyzing their reasons for fighting, not now, not when they hadn't even really begun to yet.

"No luck?" Usagi's voice seemed loud in the darkness, but even so, he could tell she was speaking just a little louder than a whisper.

"Nothing," he sighed. "I can't make the dreams come when they don't want to, apparently."

He felt the bed dip and move, and a few seconds later, the lamp on the bedside table clicked on, flooding the room with light. Usagi was wearing his tank top to sleep in, since they had yet to go acquire her some new clothes. It hung low on her, barely covering her breasts and just long enough in length for some semblance of modesty.

For the time being, they were both living out of his bag, since it had been the only one not consumed by the fire. Once they got Duo back, they would have to get him some new clothes as well, Heero thought in some slight amusement, and wouldn't that be an interesting trip, with the three of them?

The two of them had not yet moved on from the town where the fire was, where Duo was taken from. It hadn't seemed wise. After all, they wanted the kidnappers to be able to find them, and staying in one place was going to be the easiest way to do that. If they left, who knew how long it might take those bastards to locate the two of them again to give their demands?

He had fallen asleep twice already tonight, but the lack of a dream-the real ones, the ones he needed, though he hesitated to use the word 'visions' for them because that just sounded way too out there for him, especially this late at night-kept dragging him back awake. He couldn't say for certain, but he was relatively positive that Usagi had been awake each time as well. Whether she had actually slept or if she was just on as much of a hair trigger as he was, so that his waking up was in turn dragging her out of sleep, was completely up for debate. Somehow he had a feeling it was the latter option. This was the first time she had called him on it, though. After one full night and part of tonight, he couldn't really blame her for it either.

"We need those dreams," he heard himself saying in an exhausted near whine. "We need to know where to find him."

Usagi nodded. "We do," she acknowledged, "but we also need for you to be in good shape to go get him." She offered a self-deprecating smile. "I think you probably have a bit more experience with that sort of stuff than I do." He nodded, not even cracking a smile, and so hers faded. "Let's brainstorm this then. What have you tried so far?"

He sighed, flopping back hard on his pillow. "What haven't I tried? Thinking about Duo right before I go to sleep, check. Conscious dreaming, check, which has never worked for me, I might add." He nodded to the half empty bottles on the bedside table, two attempts that Usagi had heartily disapproved of, even once he conceded to her demands of trying them on separate nights. "Obviously neither sleeping pills nor the alcohol worked. I'm running out of ideas here. Nothing is working!" he groaned, frustrated.

That wasn't too hard either. He had never suffered from an overabundance of creativity. This was just straining already taxed reserves.

Usagi was silent for a long moment, obviously waiting to be sure he was done with his tirade. "Let's try one more thing. If it doesn't work, then we start hitting the streets first thing in the morning." And he did rather imagine that she did mean first thing. She was not a morning person, but for Duo... Well, there wasn't a lot either of them wouldn't do for Duo, they were finding out. "But maybe it'll work. It's worth trying, right?"

He sighed, pushing his frustration down one more time. It was getting harder and harder to do, through no fault of Usagi's. He just was not coping well with the idea of anyone having his- _their_ , he reminded himself-Duo. "What did you have in mind, Usagi?" Maybe it was a question. Maybe it was a demand. He wasn't going to put a lot of thought into which one it might have been.

She slipped out of bed and grabbed her dress from where it was lying across a chair. Housekeeping had talked about taking it yesterday and trying to get it cleaned. After some debate, though, they had decided against it. It seemed they were of the opinion the ash and soot had set in, though, and there was no saving it.

Frankly, he was a bit all right with that. He never wanted to see her in that dress ever again. It was forever going to be tied up with Duo being taken from them in his memories.

For what it was worth, though, she wasn't getting the dress. Instead, she was grabbing that weird piece of jewelry she was always wearing over her heart. A quick twist of her hand, and the locket thing was free.

That was apparently all she went for, because she brought it back with her when she climbed into bed once again.

"Usagi..." he started to say. He was not quite sure what he intended to say, but it might have been something, if everything else he had tried failed, how cheap costume jewelry was supposed to make the damn dreams come.

She shot him a dark look that silenced him, at least for the moment. She fiddled with something on the underside of the locket, and it sprang open; apparently it had some kind of hidden catch or something. Curious. Who put hidden catches in costume jewelry?

Someone who wanted to hide something big and sparkly. The jewel on the inside wasn't a diamond, not unless it was the most oddly cut one ever, but that was the stone it most closely resembled. If Usagi carried this around with her everywhere she went, it must have been either of great sentimental value or very powerful. For anyone else, he might have added 'or very expensive,' but that didn't seem to apply to Usagi.

Even from here, his hands hovering inches away from the shining jewel, he could feel it practically vibrating with power and energy.

"Did the story say anything about the Ginzuishou? The stories about Sailor Moon, I mean?" she asked quietly.

"Some," he admitted, "but they didn't say anything that I didn't dismiss immediately out of hand as being too weird." He finally looked up, meeting her eyes. "I shouldn't have been so skeptical?"

"Some of the stories are probably true. I… can't remember everything about how to make it work, but there's some here and there that I might be able to do. I think I might be able to use it to make the dreams happen. Maybe…?" She winced, an uncertain expression on her face. "I don't know."

He had to admit that he was a little leery of this jewel thing, just from the few stories his research had turned up: it lit Tokyo Tower like the sun in the middle of the night, it turned the boy band Three Lights into women, it had brought at least one person back from the dead... None of these really sounded like something he wanted to get involved in, but at the same time... Duo...

They needed to know something sooner rather than later.

Against all his thoughts otherwise and even perhaps common sense, he found himself answering, "All right, it's worth a shot."

And that was how he ended up, when he went to sleep for the third time that night, with his hand over a jewel that should not-according to the rules of physics-exist. So, of course, that was when the dreams finally came.

* * *

_It takes him a moment to realize where he is, what he is seeing. The feeling of doom still hangs over everything, but the scene is now recognizable. He and Usagi have stood in this spot before: across the road from a burning motel where Duo was taken. Damn it, this is not what he had in mind. He needed to see what happens to Duo._

_Almost as if prompted, time starts to rewind itself: he and Usagi walk backwards to the EMS vehicle, he walks away from the motel in reverse, the paramedic unwraps Usagi's feet, Usagi walks backwards into the tree line, emergence vehicles back away from the scene, and a large dark-colored vehicle backs itself back into the lot as Duo is carried unceremoniously back to the ground outside their motel room._

_Everything freezes for a split second, in the act of Duo collapsing, blood running freely from his nose, before it launches itself forward again, this time at high speed. And this time he finds himself following the car as it pulls away from the motel. He loses it a few times along winding stretches of highway and back roads, but he finds it again quickly, stopped outside a mansion._

_He feels relatively comfortable with that word for the building before him: it's easily as huge as some of the places he has come to see, both in his time as a Gundam pilot and being around Relena and the kind of old money people she is sometimes associated with. It's on the huge side and very distinct; he has a feeling he won't be forgetting what it looks like._

_He blinks, and the scene has shifted. It's hard to tell too much about where he is from the room, but he has a distinct feeling he's underground. Seriously, what is it with these rich people and their underground bunkers? What he wouldn't give for a buster rifle right about now..._

_It wouldn't help him a lot. He wouldn't risk hurting Duo, and Duo is most assuredly here. The room they are in is small, barely two meters across by two meters wide. It's tiny, utilitarian, maybe even spartan. There is a bed, a pan for a toilet, a jug of water that is about half-empty, and not much else._

_From what he can gather, what his instincts tell him, someone tossed Duo in here shortly after they arrived. He was probably dropped on the floor, so that he's at least on the bed is a small victory. It means he's alive. He was able to move. That he's on the bed now, nearly two days later, though, means he's already tried all the methods he can think of to get out of here, and all of them have failed._

_He looks like hell. It's hard to quantify what it is that makes him decide that, but he is definitely sure that they need to get Duo out of there immediately. He's pale, paler than Heero has ever seen him look before in all the time he's known him. His entire body seems strained: he's in pain. If they have so much as laid one goddamn finger on him..._

_What will he do? What can he do from here? But when he gets there... That's when they need to watch out. When he and Usagi get there, whoever this is will need to watch out. No, there's a better expression: they had better run like hell and hope that they are never heard from again. What he will do would be horrible. What Usagi will do could well be worse. But what Duo will do would be truly inspired and all the worse for that fact._

_He hates that he's nothing more than an observer in these dreams. He wants nothing more than to grab Duo up and take him away from here right now. If he can't do that, he wants to at least wrap himself around Duo and never let go again._

_Fingers trembling slightly, he reaches out and brushes Duo's hair back from where it has fallen into his eyes. To his surprise, the hair actually moves, and Duo stirs slightly. Just slightly, like it's hard for him to wake up. Usagi did intimate that he might have hurt himself with how much he had used his new abilities in their attempted escape from the bastards who are holding Duo; she might have been correct in her guess._

_It's a horrible thought: that they can hurt themselves by using talents they've had maybe a month now. Duo's is a lot more physical than his or Usagi's; if he pushed himself way too far, then it might be no wonder that he's barely conscious._

_But after nearly two days? It's worrisome. He has no idea what it is he would need to do the moment they get Duo out of here. Surely there has to be someone who can help him. Relena might even know of someone; for this, he doesn't mind using her connections. She would not deny him this._

_"Heero..." Even Duo's voice sounds ragged._

_The American turns over slowly to more fully face Heero, and he resists the urge to wince. He can spot lines of pain on Duo's forehead, even though he's mostly unconscious. That's not a good sign. There's dried blood on his face, but it looks old enough to have been from what he saw of the escape attempt; no one has bothered cleaning him up in any way._

_He's going to kill these bastards in new and creative ways._

_It may not make any difference, since this is just a dream, but he still whispers, "Usagi and I are coming for you, Duo. We'll be there as soon as we can. I promise: we are coming, and we will get you out of here."_

_"Heero..." It almost sounds like delirium, but at the same time, it doesn't. He has this strong suspicion that Duo heard him. Maybe he can't acknowledge it; maybe someone's watching or listening. Duo has always been good at spotting bugs from a mile away._

_Even if there is a bug, there is no way it could pick him up. He's just a figure in a dream, a figment really. So he takes the time to promise once more, "I promise you, we'll be there soon."_

_If Duo hears him this time, he doesn't acknowledge it. He groans quietly, rolling back to face the wall that the bed is pushed up against instead of Heero, curling into something that's very much like a fetal position._

_It reminds him of a jail cell from long ago, with him and Duo and Wufei. Duo was injured then too; of course, they all were, to be captured. Once all bravado was dealt with, Duo curled up just like this until he felt 'more human,' in his own words._

_The realization only further infuriates him, and it's entirely possible that, if he clenches his fists any more tightly, he's going to find out if a figment of a dream can bleed. What he would really like to do right now is throw a punch at the person who orchestrated all of this-and not hold back one iota of his strength when he's doing it. He wants to beat them until they know exactly how Duo feels... and then some more._

_Well, there is nothing say that he can't once he and Usagi have Duo safe again. If he wants to give in to the urge to beat someone then, there won't be anything stopping him._

_He leans down and carefully takes a seat on the edge of the narrow cot-like bed, even though there's barely room enough to sit without placing himself on top of Duo in some way. There is a brief second of hesitation, but then he strokes his hand over part of Duo's hair over and over. Even though he can't feel much of what he's doing now, he still knows exactly what it should feel like... and if Duo can feel it, maybe-_ maybe _-it will be enough to help ease the pain a little. Sometimes the oddest, smallest things go a long way to helping. Maybe..._

_When he speaks, he's careful to keep his voice low and modulated. It's less to make sure that no one hears him-because if there is any recording devices that can pick up on him in a dream, then he will be utterly and completely shocked-and more to keep trying to relax Duo. "I promise you," he says again, just as fervently as the first time, "Usagi and I will be here soon to get you, and we'll make sure everything will be okay. I promise." He bites his lip lightly, trying to think what to say. Comfort and reassurance has never been his strong suit either. Frankly, violence has always been where his talents lie, after all. But he's going to make the effort, damn it. "We'll take care of you, Duo. We miss you. We miss you so much. It's like... I don't have words for it. You're the one who can say stuff like this, Duo; I'm no good at it. But we miss you. We need you. And we're coming to get you. I swear it."_

_"Heero..." It is acknowledgement, more than he hoped for. It's also a sign that Duo's letting himself give in to the need to rest for a bit. Maybe it will even help him heal up some._

_He sits there a few more minutes, resisting the urge to spoon up behind Duo's back in the tiny space that is left. He doesn't know what would happen if he goes to sleep while already in a dream, so he doesn't let himself try it. It gives him long enough to make sure Duo is asleep. The pain lines seem a little less pronouced already, though they are still there. He's still too pale, but he can't think of anything he can do for that now._

_Now that he's here, he doesn't want to leave. He doesn't want to leave Duo alone in this situation, even if he's not really here to begin with. But he has to wake up. Usagi needs to know what he found out. Beyond that, he needs to get here in real life, so that he can fulfill his promise to Duo. He's going to take him out of here and keep him safe._

_Reluctantly, he pushes himself to his feet. The second he's standing, he feels himself being pulled away: back outside the mansion, along the winding back roads, through the twists and turns of the highway, to the fire-hollowed remains of the motel. The dream hovers there for a second, before pulling back once more: quickly along the eight kilometers between the remains of the motel and the hotel he's staying at now._

_Usagi is drifting somewhere between awake and asleep: at the slightest twitch from his body, she jerks awake again, but once he's still and she's checked him over again briefly, she settles back down again. She holds the Ginzuishou cupped in one hand; the other covers his as it lies atop the jewel._

_It could come in handy in getting Duo back. It could come in even handier with healing Duo, as it did his hand._

_Good, then. He has something loosely resembling a plan. Now to wake up and implement it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **09 August 2012**
> 
> Okay, so the same rules apply: 50 hits get a new chapter and 100 hits gets your lovely author an ice cream. If anyone feels really frisky, 10 comments gets me an extra special treat - and you guys a new chapter. (You're only 3 reviews away! I'll share a picture of my treat and everything!)
> 
> I've been down the last week with a bug of some sort. (Okay, of the upper respiratory infection sort.) Writing on the Camp NaNoWriMo story is still ongoing and coming along nicely. I'm debating on starting to upload it soon, but part of me also wants to wait until it's done. I'd hate to leave you guys dangling on another story, especially one as out there as this one is promising to be.
> 
> Anyway, see you in the next chapter.
> 
> Apollymi


	17. Chapter Sixteen

This was a little weird, even for her life. She had seen some really odd things over the years, mostly as Sailor Moon but a few as Usagi as well. Trying to guide the Ginzuishou into doing what they want it to, while at the same time trying to stay awake when she was exhausted as she could ever remember being, meant that she was getting little glimpses into what it was Heero was dreaming.

Duo was alive. That was the big thing, the one that mattered most in all of this, as far as she was concerned. He was alive. He looked horrid, pale and grey and in pain, but at least he was alive. Everything else could be dealt with later.

The Ginzuishou could be helpful again there, in dealing with the 'later'. Whether it was the jewel or somehow her that managed to heal Heero's hand, it could come in a lot of handy. If it was somehow her-and she couldn't really quite yet imagine how that could be-then it could at least bolster her until she had Duo back in top shape.

The second she had Duo in her arms again, there was no way she was going to let him out of her sight. She was never going to lose someone she loved, not ever again. And she was stubbornly refusing to follow that thought back to its source. She knew she had lost all her friends to Sailor Galaxia and her helpers, and she knew it had come down to her and Galaxia with the Starlights nearby. But she didn't remember after that. That was where everything went blank.

No, she wasn't going to think about that now. She was not going to think about this faint impression of bat-like wings and an echoing evil voice and a sword made of a little girl she had been coming to care for. She was not going to think about her own stupidity with insisting that she would not fight Galaxia. What she was going to think about was Duo and how they were about to get him back. Holding on to that thought would be what kept her sane, at least for now.

'So much depends on us getting Duo back safe and sound,' she thought to herself in quiet despair. She shook her head to clear such thoughts, though, not willing to entertain anything else like it. It felt too close to the idea of losing people she loved. The two were tied up in one another somehow, and she also didn't want to think about that.

Besides, Heero was starting to stir. That was as good a distraction as any, she dourly considered, rubbing at exhausted eyes and sitting up straight once again, just as his eyes opened.

"He's alive," she declared, impromptu to nothing.

"You could see?"

She shrugged. "Little bits here and there. I don't like how he looks, Heero. We have to get him out of there."

"We will." He sighed, glancing down at his lap then back up to her again. "I promised him we were coming for him."

"Good," she agreed, nodding enthusiastically. "Because we are. Do you know where they have him?"

"More or less. I have a general area."

He leaned over, snagging his bookbag from beside the bed and fishing out his laptop. Within seconds, he was pulling up some kind of software to view the surrounding area. So maybe they were going to go on and get Duo back soon. It certainly didn't look like Heero was planning on wasting any time.

"I'm going to grab a shower," she commented, "see if I can't get myself woken up. Heero?" She waited patiently until he met her eyes. "Don't you dare leave here without me? I'm coming with you, and we're getting Duo back together."

"Agreed. We may need your ability to heal for him."

If that was the only reason he was going to let her go, well, it wasn't ideal but at least she would be there. She wasn't going to mention it, but she did remember a few things from fighting, not just as Sailor Moon with her powers but also the limited training she had had on martial arts. She had never been terribly good, which was why she had always left such things to Mako-chan or Haruka-san, but before she had had either of them, she had been getting pretty proficient at her self-named Sailor V Kick.

It sounded so childish now, her infatuation with Sailor V and all, but it had led to her becoming Sailor Moon, which had led to whatever had happened in Tokyo when she left her time, which had led to her being here now. If it hadn't been for her childish interest in Sailor V, in the long run, she might not have ever come here and met Heero and Duo. It was funny how things turned out.

* * *

It was a little surprising to him. He had been hopeful that Usagi's jewel thing would be able to bring the dreams back, but he had not been expecting such clarity or... interactiveness, for lack of a better word for it. He had never before been able to touch anything in the dreams or interact with them in any sort of way, not like he had been able to in this one. In some ways, it was a relief: he had gotten to see Duo, touch him, tell him they would be coming for him. In other ways, it was distinctly terrifying: his ability was not supposed to work the way Usagi's jewel had made it do. He actually felt more wiped out now that he was wake than he had before he went under, when he was running on next to no sleep, thanks to how many times he had tried to bring the dreams back.

All he wanted to do was lay back down and go to sleep, this time for real, hopefully with no dreams at all. There wasn't time for that yet, though, not until Duo was back. The minute Duo was back, he was going to enforce at least a ten-hour nap. They all needed it. He had seen Usagi drifting in and out while he was dreaming. Duo looked like hell and probably felt like it too-and would rest a lot better once they got him patched up and wrapped up between the two of them.

Well, he and Usagi were just going to have to push through this. They had the advantage right now. The darkness would be a benefit to them, especially since he had seen the outside layout of the house where Duo was being held. And if luck was on their side, the people who took Duo might not expect to have someone show up to retrieve him so quickly.

If he could ever find the correct back roads between the remains of the motel and their destination that would lead them where they needed to go, that was. He hadn't been expecting there to be so many. And he hadn't managed to see the entire route, with how quickly it all flashed by. What he had seen clearly, however, was the route back to the motel, so he was trying to work in reverse, using the details he had managed to pick up to plug in the holes in his memory. It wasn't going to be perfect, but as long as he was able to find the house, he would count it as a win.

From the adjoining bathroom, he could hear Usagi cut the shower on. She probably wasn't going to be in there for very long; all she had said was that she was going to see if she could wake herself up, after all. Besides, she seemed to have guessed that he was intending for them to leave tonight. The sooner they had Duo back, the better, after all, was his thinking, and he could imagine that it was hers too. The sooner they acted on the information he had managed to pick up, the better off they were, in this case.

Finally, he zoomed out a bit further, impatiently scanning the map until he found what it was he was looking for: a ridiculously huge house in the middle of nowhere, large enough to be considered a mansion. It was set on enough of a hill that there could definitely be underground levels to it. And, as he zoomed back in, it even looked like the house that he had seen in his dream only a few moments ago. The paint on the outside was different, perhaps more cheerfully colored instead of fading into tones of grey, but the basic layout of the place was the same.

He had found it. Now he just needed to work quickly and figure out their route, so they could hit the road as soon as possible.

Less than a moment later, he heard the shower cut off once again. Even by his standards that was an unusually quick shower, but he wasn't going to complain. It meant that Usagi would be ready all the sooner and that they could be on their way to finding Duo and getting him back. These were both good things as far as he was concerned.

Five minutes after that, Usagi opened the bathroom door. He spared half a second to glance up at her and couldn't resist a frown. There was nothing he could do about the fact she only had one item of her own clothes to wear. Personally, he wasn't going to let her go fight these people in nothing but one of his shirts that strained for modesty, so of course she would have to wear her own dress, but that didn't mean he had to like it.

She shot him a small grin when she saw the look on his face, and it only looked a little strained. "I'm not much caring for this thing either, Heero, but I'm not going to fight bad guys in my underwear. Let's leave that for the hentai, okay?"

It felt a little odd to be saying this, but... well... he needed to. "Don't take this the wrong way, Usagi, but I fully intend to burn that dress the first chance we get."

She raised an eyebrow, the expression on her face somewhere between mischievous and disbelieving. "Is there a right way to take that, Heero?" Before he could say anything, though, she continued, "I'm ready to get rid of it myself, so I'll hand you the lighter fluid... Once I have other clothes to wear." She sighed, fiddling with the skirt of it in clear annoyance. "Of course all the rest of my clothes had to go up in smoke, literally."

"Once we have Duo back, I'm ordering a nap of at least ten hours." He shifted uncomfortably. "After that, I fully intend to take both you and Duo clothes shopping. His bag was burned up too." It felt a little weird to be admitting his frivoulous little plans for once this was all over, but at the same time, it was completely worth it for the smile that was building on Usagi's face.

"Maybe we can even make Relena-san pay for it."

Now there was an idea, but not one that would be helpful in the next few hours. "Maybe so." He glanced around the room briefly, making a mental list of where everything was, what he would need to bring with them on this little quest, and what he would need to leave here in the hopes they were able to return safely. Honestly, he wasn't too keen on leaving anything. Most everything in the room belonged to him, and if someone was good enough, they could probably track them using it.

Granted, their tracker would have to be very, very good, but there was probably someone out there like that. Likely even someone who didn't care about anything but the money being offered-and there had to be money offered; the guys Usagi had described sounded very much like professionals, and pros worked for money, not ideals.

So rather than leave anything here, everything was just going to go in the truck of the car. That way it would be with them if worse came to worse. The backseat was going to be for Duo. That way, he would be able to stretch out more fully while he recuperated. He would be accepting no other possible alternative scenarios.

When he glanced back, Usagi was staring at him as well. If nothing else, he got the feeling he was being thoroughly inspected and judged, hopefully fit to go get their lover back, because that was what he was going to do either way.

"Let's go get Duo" was all Usagi said in final judgment.

Yes, it was definitely past time for that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **12 August 2012**
> 
> Okay, wow, you guys... That was pretty amazing. 3 days to 50 hits is doing really good for a Sailor Moon crossover these days. And I got the last reviews needed for my special treat, though it will have to wait until tomorrow or this coming weekend for me go get it. It's late here.
> 
> Anyway, here's Chapter Sixteen as promised. And I'm going to start uploading the new story when I reach Chapter 25, I think, which shouldn't be too much longer.
> 
> See you in the next chapter!  
> Apollymi


	18. Chapter Seventeen

Usagi had been unusually quiet the entire drive, for her at least. He had come to expect a certain level of noise out of her, even now, but this time she had confounded him. She hadn't said a word to him since they left the hotel.

That wasn't to say she had been completely silent, because that wouldn't have been the truth. She had, however, kept up a whispered conversation with that jewel of her-the Ginzuishou, as she called it-for most of the drive. From what little he was able to overhear, she seemed to be laying down the law about what it would and would not be doing in the next hour or so. It would be helping them find Duo; it would not be killing anyone that was in their way. It would be healing Duo if needs be; it would not level the entire place no matter what she said in the heat of the moment. It would help keep Heero safe; it would not vaporize anyone that was trying to hurt Heero.

Frankly, if this was the kind of heart to heart that was necessary to keep the thing in line, he wasn't sure that it was an asset. It might have been an equal part hindrance, and that was something they did *not* need right now. Right now, they needed everything to go their way... and he was almost tempted to ask Usagi to tell it that too, if he wasn't worried what she would have to tell it could _not_ do after that.

Finally, he had to ask, "Is that always necessary?"

Startled, Usagi glanced up at him. "What?"

"Is it always necessary to lecture it to make it do what you want?"

She tucked it back into the locket and reattached the locket to her dress before she answered, clearly taking her time to be sure she said whatever it was she was going to say correctly. "No, it's not. It's supposed to respond to my heart. But I want to be sure that it and I are on the same page. I have this vague memory of it not responding properly the first time I tried to use it, and I don't want a repeat of that with Duo. Especially..." She trailed off and fidgetted a bit uncomfortably. "Especially since I don't really have any way to focus it right now."

He thought back to his research and all the articles that had been written on the nature of the various weapons Sailor Moon had used: various scepters and wands. Clearly, they must have been what she was talking about, that focussed the power of the Ginzuishou. "Will you be able to use it without a focus?" Because that was the big question right now.

She nodded. "I can use it. It can just... No, I can use it. There's nothing the Ginzuishou can't do, and I'll make it do what I want."

And he wasn't sure if she was addressing the last part of that to him or to the jewel itself. It could go either way.

This was the last turn he remembered seeing before the mansion's driveway. He drove slightly past it and pulled off to the side of the road, as far away from the road itself as he felt comfortable doing. The car was partially hidden by some low-lying branches of the nearby trees. It wouldn't fool anyone for long, but it would have to do for the moment.

He had this annoying feeling like time was starting to run short. The doom that had been hanging over their heads, dangling like the Sword of Damocles, was getting closer; the threat holding the sword up was beginning to fray.

They were going to have to get in there and get Duo out of there quickly and hopefully quietly, before things had a chance to go downhill as quickly as he feared that they might. Whether that was his newfound ability or just his sense as a soldier, he didn't know, but it was a feeling he couldn't shake.

"Heero?" It was just his name, but it was also a wealth of questions, not the least of which being what they were doing.

"It's about three kilometers from here to the house they're keeping Duo. We're going to cut that time down by cutting through the forest." She glanced down at her feet, shod once again in borrowed boots with something very much like relief. If the situation had been less dire, it might have almost been funny. "That way they won't see us coming. Hopefully we'll be able to get in and get Duo back out without anyone noticing."

She nodded once, climbing out of the car and pulling herself to her feet, before she closed the car door quietly behind her. This was nothing like the kind of fighting she was used to, he knew from the things he had found out in his research and from Duo's story, but she was gamely following his orders. Hopefully he wouldn't have to worry too much about her while they were getting Duo out. He didn't want to get one lover free and lose the other.

He would feel a whole lot better if she wasn't wearing that dress still. Partially that was due to everything that had happened and that he had dreamed, but partially that was also thanks to the fact it was at least part still white. It would blend in with absolutely nothing. She would be too easily visible. There was really nothing to do for it, though. It had been too late in the evening to find a place open to buy her new clothes.

They kept silent as they walked through the woods. Usagi stayed at his side whenever possible, and he had to wonder if she was doing it to reassure him. He didn't want to admit to needing it, so that she was being proactive on the matter helped. Or maybe she wanted to keep _him_ in _her_ sight. This was not the time for either of them to be wandering off.

"If they do spot us," he finally continued, speaking just loud enough for her to hear him, "stay with me. I'll keep us safe."

"I'm not totally useless here, Heero." The reminder was gentle. Hell, _Usagi_ was gentle; he didn't want to be getting her involved in his kind of fighting. "I'll do everything I can to make sure we can get Duo out of this place." She shivered against the heat of the night, rubbing her bare arms slightly. "Something about this entire place feels _wrong_."

"'Wrong'?" he heard himself repeating. "Wrong in what way?"

She shook her head. "Wrong in a magic way, I think perhaps. Someone has been trying to do some truly terrifying things here, and whatever it was, it did not go well. People died, and I think that was the intention." Her face hardened slightly. "No one should be allowed to do something like this."

Okay, maybe his assessment of her gentleness was a bit premature. She was gentle, but it was like velvet over steel: there was a hard layer beneath it that wouldn't bend or break. She might have been used to another means of fighting, but she was every bit the warrior he and Duo were. He needed to make himself remember that, before he found himself on the wrong side of it.

He nodded slowly. "We'll have to be extra careful then. Please, stay close to me, Usagi." Desperation made its way into his voice and even pulled a 'please' out of him.

"I'll... do what I can. I think I have to find out what did this. I think I have to stop it." She sounded a little distracted, and that wasn't good. No, not distracted; she sounded far away, as though she was already at the house.

"Usagi..."

For half a second, he vaguely considered that, if he had rope on him, he would probably tie her up right here and now and leave her until he had Duo in tow. This was going to be more than he could sanely handle right at this moment. If he had to be worrying about Duo *and* Usagi...

Almost as if she could read his mind-and wasn't that a terrifying thought, the idea of Usagi being able to read his mind-Usagi's blue eyes turned to meet his own. Her face was dark in the shadows of the trees, but he could clearly see that she did not look happy. And okay, neither was he, but she looked a lot angrier than he could remember seeing her since he had known her. She looked angrier than all his research on her as Sailor Moon and all his personal interactions with her as Usagi would have indicated that she was capable of.

"I mean it, Heero," she intoned darkly. "Don't you dare count me out of this. I have to do something to stop this. Think of it as a distraction. I am the one they want, after all."

"But they would be absolutely stupid to think that you're going to be there alone," he reminded her. "And even if they do think you are for some reason, they're going to swarm you."

"And take me to whoever's in charge, and we can get this completely out of the way. I don't want this hanging over any of us." She took the half-step closer to him that was necessary to gently press up against him and cupped a soft hand against his cheek. "I'll be fine. Take the distraction and get to Duo. You're the one who knows where they're keeping him."

Damn it... He did not like this plan, especially the fact that it made sense. He didn't particularly concede that point to her, though, at least not aloud. "Once I have Duo, we're coming after you."

She nodded. "You'd better. I'm counting on you, Heero. I know you won't let me down." She cracked a grin, and if it was weaker than her normal ones... Well, he wasn't going to say anything. "I could make a crack about 'my hero'."

And that was terrifying too. He determined to himself that he wasn't going to ask about what she remembered of her past, including the whole Sailor Moon thing and, beyond that, the thing Duo had mentioned, that the princess the Sailor Senshi fought and died to protect-he thought he remembered Duo saying the princess' name being Serenity-being Sailor Moon. That seemed... like an important thing about Usagi they should know.

Not knowing did nothing to change how he felt about her, but it did seem like important information... since his current experiences with princesses seemed to center around Relena. In very few ways did Usagi seem like a princess of Relena's ilk.

"Let's hold off on those until we have Duo back," he finally requested. He took a deep breath and nodded. "I'll go along with your plan. I don't like it, but I'll do it. You just make sure you keep yourself safe until we get there." And he wasn't entertaining any thoughts that Duo wasn't all right or going to be all right. If he let himself think about that, he would lose it. Amazing how quickly these two had developed such a hold on him.

"I will. You had better do the same, Heero, or you're going to be in big trouble, mister." She poked him in the chest briefly as she spoke, her words as fierce as any he had ever heard from her. She followed it up with a kiss, as if to soften her words. "Let's go get our Duo."

If looks could kill, Heero would have put her in her grave with the nasty look he shot her the moment she broke cover, she thought to herself in some amusement. She carefully kept the emotion from showing on her face, instead focusing on counting all the guards she could see rushing towards the front of the house where she was. She had no way of knowing just how many there were going to be; if anyone knew at this point, it would be Heero; but at least she had done as promised: she had most assuredly created a distraction for Heero.

Of course, there were enough guns shoved into her face right now that she really needed to put Heero out of her mind, at least for the moment. This was going to be tricky enough as it was.

She glanced around, and yeah, it was no real surprise that she saw some of the same men who had come to take her before. The firestarter wasn't there, at least not yet, but a few of the others were. It was to one of them that she walked up and flat out stated, "All right. You wanted me here. I'm here. Now let him go." The man stared down at her in undisguised shock. Was it really so surprising that she would come here after Duo? Really? What did that say about first opinions of her? What did it matter anyway? This wasn't exactly a popularity contest. "Now?" she prompted once more.

"The master of the house would like to see you, Miss Tsukino," another voice spoke up. She glanced to the side of the man she had been speaking to, and yep, it was the firestarter. She should have known he would be the one to be leading things off here.

"If I do, will you let him go?" It paid to be persistent. Besides, if they were all preoccupied with her and not Duo, then Heero should be able to sneak down to wherever he was and get him out. "I'm not moving another step until you promise me that."

"I promise you."

That was too easy, she thought tiredly. He had agreed too easily and too quickly for it to be the truth. They had no intention whatsoever of letting Duo go. Typical. It didn't matter if they were aliens or monsters or humans. Bad guys were all the same. Well, if they weren't planning letting Duo go, then Heero should have a clear path.

"Okay," she feigned agreement. "Then I'll see your master."

The firestarter gave her a slight bow, gesturing her forward. Weird... As far as she had noticed, she was the only one who still bowed. But then, it didn't seem like a very Japanese style bow. Instead, maybe, it seemed almost courtly, which made even less sense. From what she had gathered, Relena was very close to being nobility-if not royalty-in this new era of hers, and there had been no bowing in her household. Maybe she hadn't been there for the right formal occasion? She shoved the discrepancy from her mind; there was no reason to worry about it right now. Right now, her concern needed to be for playing her part of this escape attempt.

She let the firestarter lead the way into the house before she spoke again. "What exactly does your master want with me?" It was partially playing her part, but there was also genuine curiosity to the question. Who would go to such lengths to get her and-presumably-her abilities? More than that, why would they?

"I believe that is not my story to tell. The master of the house will tell you everything you need to know, Miss Tsukino."

She bit her tongue at the urge to correct him to 'Tsukino-san'. It was actually harder than she had thought it would be, but she wanted to be damn sure not to give away any idea of how much of her past and her own abilities she remembered. She wanted to maintain some level of surprise in her favor here.

But at least she was in the house and on her way to meet the person who was behind all of this, so maybe that was a plus. And, once Heero had Duo out of here safe and sound, maybe he wouldn't kill her for this too badly.

* * *

He was going to have words with Usagi when they all got out of this. They weren't going to be pleasant words either.

No matter what else, though, she had most assuredly kept her word: she had created one hell of a distraction. The place was practically empty: a few guards remaining here and there, but clearly the bulk of the staff was preoccupied with Usagi.

He didn't have to like it, but she was keeping her word and buying time for him to go find Duo. She was keeping up her end of the bargain; he was working on doing the same. Of course, knowing bits of the layout ahead of time definitely was helpful. It was easy to tell which window led to a room closest to the door leading to the lower levels of the place.

The door he had seen that led down was at the end of a short hallway. Of course it was locked; given that they wanted to be sure to keep Usagi out of there, it made a lot of sense to do so; but that was no real obstacle for him. He twisted the door handle slowly and cautiously... but firmly enough that he was able to hear the lock crunch. The noise sounded loud as could be in the silence of this hallway, but he was skilled enough to know that it was barely anything at all. With Usagi holding their attention, no one was going to pay attention to some little noise.

The stairs were dark, and he wasn't about to risk a light switch. Just because he hadn't hit any opposition yet, that didn't mean he wouldn't encounter some before he left here. Besides, he could see in the dark well enough to tell where he needed to put his feet and if someone was approaching him, and that was all he needed for right now. Once he reached the bottom, though, that would be a different story.

If he had to guess, he might hazard that he had descended about fifteen meters below ground level when he reached solid floor again. Why would someone need this kind of depth for a cellar? He didn't believe it was a bunker, like the President possessed; he had detected no means of lowering the house into the ground nor anything that could work as blast doors. If it was a bunker, it was an odd one. Of course, if it was a cellar or a basement, then it was an even odder one still.

There was emergency lighting on down here, which was a small relief, though he was not about to question why there wasn't any on the steps. If pressed, he would go with the eccentricities of rich people as his answer. It was a good catchall reply.

The room Duo was in was about three or so meters down the narrow hallway. Still no signs of any guards. This was getting to be a bit concerning. Even if Usagi had the bulk of them busy, there still should have been at least a few men down here guarding their prisoner. Why wouldn't they be?

Again he found himself in front of a locked door, and again he twisted the handle until he heard the lock crunch. It wasn't as elegant as Duo's lock picks, but it was just as effective at getting the job done. He quickly opened the door and slipped inside, closing it once more behind himself.

If Duo had moved at all in the time since Heero dreamed about him, then it wasn't by much. He held himself as still as a statue, not even daring to draw breath, until he saw Duo's chest rise and fall, the tell-tale signs of the other man breathing. He was alive, if nothing else. Beyond that, they could deal with anything else.

"Duo?" he started to say, taking about a step forward to touch the other's shoulder.

Abruptly, his back collided with the wall behind him, his feet rising up off the ground, leaving him suspended in the air by nothing but the invisible hand around his throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **16 August 2012**
> 
> And here's another early morning chapter. I've been doing my best to keep checking and making sure you guys get your chapters on time. I'm not getting my ice creams, though... because I'm broke. Sometimes being grown-up sucks. (And sometimes not going "Paypal me some money?" to all your friends is tough too.)
> 
> I have gotten a total of 10 reviews for _Belladonna_. So whenever I have money again, I can get my treat. Thanks, you guys! You're awesome!
> 
> I'll be starting to upload the new story either today or tomorrow. Keep an eye for "Of Worlds to Fall"!
> 
> See you next chapter!  
> Apollymi


	19. Chapter Eighteen

Usagi cleared her throat nervously. She had long since lost count of the number of guards surrounding her, even if she maintained her suspicion that the firestarter was the one she was going to have to keep a special eye out for. He was the one who was going to cause her the most trouble. Of course, that didn't mean that the others didn't have the potential to mess up their plans too, but the firestarter...

There was something about him that put her teeth on edge and yet plucked at the back of her mind as familiar-and not just from the attack on the motel either. No, it was something far older than that.

But no, she couldn't be wasting time thinking about that right now. She needed to be concentrating on buying Heero the time he needed. Though she was relatively certain most of the guards on the property were standing around her, that didn't mean that they definitely were. It also didn't mean that they would be staying with her the rest of the time she would be here. Somehow she needed to do something to be certain they didn't leave, even when she was taken before their 'master,' whoever he was.

"What does your master want me for?" she asked, mostly to the group at large but, in part, also directly to the firestarter.

The tall man shrugged nonchalantly. "I don't know. He doesn't tell me these things." He shot her a smirk over his shoulder, and there was something about it that seemed _so_ familiar. It was right there, just out of her grasp. "I do rather imagine he wants you to do something for him."

"Something?" she repeated, carefully making sure an appropriate amount of both fear and defiance were in her voice. She was playing a role: these people's interpretation of Tsukino Usagi. It wouldn't do to break character, at least not yet. Not until it would be advantageous for _them_ to do so. "What kind of something?"

He shrugged. "I would imagine he wants you grant him a wish. That is what you do, is it not? Grant wishes?"

She resisted the urge to wince. The Ginzuishou had been granting wishes through her, responding to her heart's wish to please the people around her while she had no memory to fall back on. Whether or not it would still be willing to do so was an entire other matter altogether. Whether or not she had any desire in her heart to grant this person's wishes was yet another matter.

"I- I don't know how it happens." As a lie, it was only a relatively small one. She had never really understood how it was that the Ginzuishou actually worked. "I don't know if I can."

"I think you should start considering finding a way," the firestarter commented-and she honestly couldn't tell if his words were snide or well intended-as he pushed a hand through raven black hair. "It wouldn't do to deny the master of the house whatever he wants. It tends to be... unpleasant when that happens."

'When it happens'... Meaning that it had happened before. Somehow, at some point, they had found someone else who could do what she did-or something similar to it-and that person had refused and then bad things had happened.

She thought back to the feeling of wrongness she had detected from outside the house. Horrible things had happened here over many, many years. How many people like her had been through here.

The firestarter glanced over his shoulder again. He must have read something in her face because he stopped and turned to face her before he spoke again. "He's had a lot of psychics through here over the years. Most haven't been seen again. Please do try not to add to those numbers, Miss Tsukino."

Then they definitely had not been planning to let Duo go, not if these people were collecting psychics for whatever nefarious purposes they had in mind. Whatever it was, she already knew it was not good.

Still, there was something she had to ask. "If psychics die here all the time, why are *you* here?" She nodded towards his hands. "You're clearly one of us."

He snorted, and there was no amusement in it. "I was born here, I've lived my whole life here, and I will die here. The master of the house is my father, and you just don't turn your back on family, Miss Tsukino. It's just not done."

"Even when your family is doing horrible things to other people?" she persisted. This time it wasn't part of a role. No, this was entirely her. What kind of family permitted such things? What kind of family engaged in such things? Especially enough for the sickly aura of it to sink into the property. "How is that done?"

"You stop thinking about it after a while, Miss Tsukino. This is your stop. The master of the house..." He broke off, shaking his head, as if realizing he had already given away the secret and he might as well just run with it now. "My father will see you now. Please do try to keep in mind what I said. Whatever you do, don't tell him no. It will be better for you and your man if you don't refuse him." He courteously opened the door for her and gestured her into the dark room beyond.

No, no, no, no, no! She couldn't let them slip away from her now. It had barely been five minutes; surely Heero would need longer than this.

Before she could do anything, even break into a stomping fit or scream, someone gave her a firm push into the room. It was probably intended to be more a nudge than anything else, she thought inanely, but when all the guys who had been behind her were behemoths and she was barely 150 centimeters, even a tap became a whole lot more. The door quickly closed again behind her, and a lock snapped closed from the other side. Okay, clearly, they had way too much practice at this.

Her first instinct was to whirl around and beat on the door. She ruthlessly pushed it down and instead focused on the room surrounding her. Everything about it spoke of someone with a whole lot of money who loved the rich trappings of life. Even in her time, some of the furniture and fixings in here would have been antique. Now? It was a bit... overboard perhaps.

She didn't see this so called master of the house right away, but there was a hugely oversized wingback chair facing the fireplace; it was so large that a person could easily sit in it and not be noticed from behind. That was where she needed to be, she supposed.

Carefully stepping across rugs that had to have cost more than her father would have earned in his entire lifetime, she crossed the room and stopped in front of the fireplace. She wasn't sure if what she saw was what she had been expecting, but in hindsight, it made a great deal of sense.

The man sitting in the chair was... Well, 'elderly' would have been a compliment. She wasn't sure what word to use when the person looked older than elderly, because she wasn't going to let 'decrepit' cross her thoughts. Once upon a time, he must have been a tall lean man, much like his son, as she figured it, but time and age had long since taken its toll on him.

She wasn't sure his frame could hold him up now, even if he was as gaunt as anything she had ever seen. His eyes were closed at the moment, but she wasn't going to be let herself begin to think that he was asleep for one minute. Even seeing him like this, she could feel a barely contained strength lying beneath the man's skin.

It was like... like... like meeting a very old tiger, she supposed. He might not be in the game anymore, but that didn't mean she should disregard him as unimportant. It didn't mean that he wasn't a very dangerous creature anymore. By no means did it mean that.

"You must be the girl who grants wishes." She was almost startled enough to jump when he spoke, still without opening his eyes and looking at her. His voice was surprisingly clear... and there was something annoyingly familiar about it. She couldn't place it, though, and so set the thought aside for now. "Is this correct?"

"I guess so." She wasn't sure if she was slipping back into her role or if she was genuinely nervous about speaking to this man. Perhaps it was a little of both. "I don't know how it works. I don't know what makes some of the wishes come true and not others."

This had been something she had wondered about for a long time: why the Ginzuishou, when used without her Moon Stick or when not helping her transform, would respond to her heart sometimes but not others. Luna had always theorized that it had to do with her heart not being behind the wish, but there had been plenty of times where she had wanted something to happen with everything in her body, and it had done nothing. Sometimes it had only ever seemed to respond when the situation was a matter of life and death; a time or two, using it had even led to her own death or near death, so what was different about those times than others?

"Are you saying you will not grant my wish, little girl?"

She shook her head violently. "I'm not saying that. I'm just saying I don't know if I _can_."

"And if it means the life of your man if you do not or _cannot_?" The question was simply phrased. She could hear the malice in it, as well as the mocking in his final word. "If it means your own life?"

'No one I love is dying on me ever again!' a voice in the back of her mind screamed, and frankly, it had a point. She wasn't going to lose anyone else. She didn't know where Duo was or if he was okay or even if Heero had been able to reach him safely. For all she knew, there might have been a guard on the other side of the door with instructions to go kill Duo if she refused. And if they caught Heero? That could be even worse.

"I said that I don't know if I can or can't. I didn't say I wouldn't try to do what you want, if you will promise to let my-" She paused briefly, trying to sort out the proper word without saying too much. It was probably better to play up the scared teenager angle for as long as she possibly could. "If you will promise to let my boyfriend and me go."

"I will let you go if you are able to grant my wish. If you can't..." The old man let the threat hang. She could more than fill in the blanks.

"I'll do what I can." She wasn't going to make a promise to fulfill this man's wish, after all, no more than she was going to say no to him. If these were the options given to the other people with abilities who had been here before her... She felt for them. She didn't know them, but she felt for them.

"I wish for my wife to be back and alive."

She felt a jolt running through her, as if she had suddenly stepped on a live current. To her surprise, it was the Ginzuishou. This was a wish it liked? But this guy's wife, she had to have been dead for decades. Why was the Ginzuishou interested in helping bring her back to life?

In her mind's eye, the figure of a woman started to form. Long raven black hair flowed down her back, much like her son's. She couldn't see the woman's face nor her eyes, but there was something unnervingly familiar about her, something she couldn't quite place but was on the tip of her tongue.

"You look familiar."

The old man's voice was amazingly more suspicious than it had been before, and he stared at her through narrowed eyes. Narrowed _blue_ eyes… She knew him.

But how could _he_ be here? It was impossible.

* * *

His feet were dangling a few feet above the ground. It wasn't easy to tell exactly how far off the ground he was, but given that his eyes were just above being level to the top of the door frame, he was willing to bet that, it was further than the average person could lift someone. And there was no one there. That was important too.

Yet the invisible grip on his throat remained. It wasn't tight enough-yet-to cut off his air supply, but it was most assuredly present and very, very strong.

There were two options: either Duo's cell had an invisible guard or it was Duo himself. Oddly, the first one was somewhat plausible… but it was ultimately unlikely. Ignoring the movies where people turned themselves invisible, it didn't seem like an ability that could exist in the real world. So that left one other option.

It took him no more than a second to think his way through all of this and come to a quick decision. It was Duo. It had to be.

If it were anyone else, he might have worried that these people had somehow gotten to Duo. With the American, though, it didn't feel like something he had to worry about.

Instead, he was pretty sure this was Duo's abilities, kicking in while Duo couldn't defend himself. Now that was a pretty useful talent to have. Right now, though, he wasn't going to say anything against his own newly found talent; it had led him straight to Duo.

"Duo?" he called out as loudly as he dared. If there was any reaction, it was impossible for him to detect. "Duo, please… It's Heero. Let go, please, Duo."

Abruptly the invisible hand released him, and he dropped to the ground hard in an awkward pile. He sat there for a second, coughing and his hand rubbing at his throat. There wouldn't be a bruise or anything there; it hadn't been tight enough for that for starters, but also there hadn't really been a hand touching him. It wasn't the weirdest thing he had ever encountered, especially given the last few weeks, but it was a little up there.

When he finally looked up, Duo was slowly struggling to sit up. True to what Heero had seen in his last dream, Duo looked like a slice of raw hell, to use one of the American's more creative phrases. He was still too pale, skin almost grey with the pain he was obviously still in but not saying anything about. His eyes were fever bright, and it was obviously to see even from here that he was shaking slightly. Pain lines still creased his forehead, giving his face an overall pinched look.

Okay, he was going to have to get Duo to Usagi and fast. He didn't even want to think about how they were going to make that happen, given all the guards that had been surrounding her, but they _were_ going to accomplish it. This wasn't going to wait.

"Sorry about that" somehow were the first words that came out of Duo's mouth. "I-"

"Don't be sorry," he cut in, forestalling any further apologies. He pushed himself to his feet, taking a quick survey of his own body. Some aches, possibly some bruises, but he was all right overall. Maybe once Usagi was done with Duo, he would turn himself over to her as well. But he had fought in much worse condition... and he had no illusions that there would not be a fight to get out of here. "Let's just get out of here."

"Are you real this time?"

He winced. Whatever Usagi's jewel had done, apparently it had managed to project enough of him here that Duo had been able to hear him... and to think that he had left him. "Of course I'm real. I was dreaming before."

"I'm not sure I wasn't the one doing the dreaming."

He rubbed absently at the sudden and sharp ache in his chest. He hadn't hurt it in the fall, had he? No, he didn't remember it. Besides, it didn't feel like an actual physical injury. Instead, it felt more like he had torn his own heart, emotionally speaking, maybe. Emotions still were not his strong suit.

"No, I was dreaming. Usagi did something, to make sure I could dream the right place to find you, and part of me was actually here." He sighed, shaking his head at the horrible explanation; he wasn't too good at them either. "I promise you, I'm really here this time. I'm keeping my promise: we're getting out of here."

Duo nodded slowly. Perhaps he was still a little wary; he looked like he felt that way. "All right. Then let's get out of here."

"All right," he agreed as well. "We'll have to get Usagi."

The other man stiffened, his whole body going painfully rigid. "They're after Usagi. It's her they're after."

He really didn't want to, but he nodded. "I know. We both knew. She's being bait so I could come get you without too much interference."

The look in Duo's eyes was angry. He probably would have skipped straight on to livid or furious if he weren't so exhausted. "This was not the best plan in the world, Heero."

"It was a bit of a desperate one." He paused, debating briefly before continuing. "And it was Usagi's plan. I... just didn't have a better one to offer."

Duo shook his head slowly. "So now we probably have to go rescue her."

"I don't think so," he commented, stepping over to the bed and cautiously helping Duo to stand.

The other man seemed shaky, well beyond what two days' imprisonment should be. He glanced to the side, where the water jug he had seen in the dream was located; it was empty, not a drop of condensation left on it, so clearly it had been empty for a while. Dehydration could explain part of it. Usagi had said that she thought Duo had overdone it with his abilities when they were attacked, so that could have easily been another part of it. Injured and dehydrated... The combination would be enough to make anyone a little weak.

"Besides," he continued, while Duo struggled to find his footing, "I think Usagi can take care of herself." Duo shot him a look that was questioning beneath the pain. "She's gotten more of her memories back. She's..." He trailed off, uncertain what exactly to say. "She's something."

"She's definitely something, Heero," the other man huffed in vague amusement. "She's ours, and I won't want her with these assholes a moment longer. Let's go get her and blow the pop stand."

"She's Sailor Moon," popped out of his mouth without warning. Duo glanced at him, a question clearly written on her face, so he pressed on. "She's Sailor Moon, and she remembers parts of being Sailor Moon. She's... more powerful than either of us realized. It's... pretty awe-inspiring, for the lack of a better phrase."

Duo was silent for a long moment. To be fair, it possibly had something to do with him taking his first step and nearly falling. Only a quick save from Heero kept him from hitting the floor. "So we have a super heroine for a girlfriend?" he gasped, apparently as an attempt to distract himself. "Good. That's a bit reassuring."

He couldn't watch Duo struggle with this any longer. He had been standing aside, knowing that if he were in Duo's place, he would prefer to do this on his own that be helped. But time was not on their side, and they needed to get out of here before Usagi's distraction ran out. So he took hold of Duo's arm and pulled it gently around his shoulder, slipping his free arm around Duo's waist, taking the brunt of the American's weight onto himself. There, that should help them move a bit faster. They would need all the help they could get.

He couldn't help one more sentimental confession. "We missed you, Duo. It's good to have you back."

They were out the door and part of the way down the hall towards the stairs before the other man spoke again. "How long have I been gone, Heero?"

There was that tearing feeling in his chest again. Yes, it definitely had to be emotional somehow. It had been dark in the room Duo was kept in, barely enough light to see a few inches in front of one's face. The hallway itself was well lit, but that didn't mean that any of it had gotten into Duo's cell. How would he be able to tell time in a place like that? "It's been two days, Duo. Two days that lasted forever."

"Oh, you are sentimental, aren't you?" It was the first real glimpse he had gotten so far of the real Duo since he had opened that door. It was enough to make him breathe a happy sigh of relief.

"Only for the two of you."

From the end of the hall, from beneath the door at the top of the stairs, a bright light flared. If it hadn't been the middle of the night, he would have thought it was the sun he was seeing, but that just couldn't be possible. Unless...

_...lit Tokyo Tower like the sun in the middle of the night..._

Usagi...

Was this part of her distraction? Or was she in actual trouble?

Either way, they needed to get to Usagi. Now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **18 August 2012**
> 
> Can you guys tell I'm working on getting my title of "Queen of Cliffhangers" back? How am I doing? (Back before FanfictionNet, there was FanficNet. There, I earned the titles "Queen of Cliffhangers", "Queen of Angst", and "Queen of Crossovers". One at the time, I'm going to get them back.)
> 
> Okay, I'm bad about remembering to start posting _Of Worlds to Fall_. I'll post the first chapter right after I finish up here. It's a DBZ/SM/GW crossover. Where I'm at now, it's sitting at about 30k, with plenty more story to go. I hope you guys like it. (And once I'm done with it, I'm going to try to finish up _Betrüger_. Try, mind you: no promises.)
> 
> See you in the next chapter, everyone!  
> Apollymi


	20. Chapter Nineteen

It just wasn't possible. She just couldn't make sense of how something like this could have happened. It just didn't make any kind of sense.

The old man-and she wasn't going to put more thought into him right because, yeah-was still staring at her in open shock, like he had just seen a ghost or something. That was more than she could handle right now. Instead, she glanced over her shoulder to the woman with the long raven black hair. The other woman lay on the ground breathing shallowly. If she hadn't been watching the woman breathe carefully in and out, Usagi wouldn't thought she was actually alive.

"How are _you_ here?" the old man demanded. "It's not possible."

"I would say it's impossible for you to be here too, you know. I mean, what year is it?" she countered immediately.

The old man lurched unsteadily to his feet. Once he was there, though, he was surprisingly quick on his feet, grabbing hold of her arm tightly and giving it a strong shake she would have likewise thought impossible. "Are you who I think you are?" he persisted. When she was silent, he shook her again, harder this time. "Answer me!"

"Stop it, Mamo-chan! You're hurting me!" slipped out completely unintentionally. She certainly hadn't been planning on acknowledging that fact, at least to herself, for a while yet.

How could her supposedly destined boyfriend still be here and alive now? It just didn't make any sense. Except...

There was when he had been injured-killed-by the Dark Kingdom and she awoke as Princess Serenity to heal him. She remembered Luna talking about part of the Ginzuishou lodging in Tuxedo Kamen... Endymion... Mamo-chan, bringing him back to life. Of course it had been in time for him to be kidnapped by said Dark Kingdom and brainwashed into becoming one of them. But what if that tiny piece of the Ginzuishou had still been in him?

Even she had to admit that she had no idea what the Ginzuishou was capable of doing. She knew it could save the planet or destroy it, but beyond that? She was completely without a clue. It seemed like it could be possible for it to have kept him alive all these years.

Apparently he had moved on from her, if his so-called wife behind her and his son outside the door was any indication. So much for destiny, then. It looked as though they had all left it firmly behind them-and it was probably for the best.

The old man... No, Mamo-chan... No, Mamoru sat back down in his chair heavily, like the weight of the world was suddenly on his shoulders. "You disappeared a very long time ago, Usako. How can you possibly be there and still be so... _young_?"

She shook her head slowly. "I have no idea. I don't remember much after the Senshi died. There was Galaxia and then... And then there was nothing until I woke up here."

But that was no longer strictly true any longer. She was starting to get flashes of the final few minutes of the fight. She remembered Chibi Chibi and the sword that was the last good remnants of her soul. She remembered being Princess Serenity, wings flashing out from her back to stop an uncontrolled descent. She remembered Galaxia crashing into the ground and then staring up her with eyes filled with more hatred than she had ever seen in a human being before. She remembered everything about Galaxia changing, and she remembered Galaxia taking the Sailor Starlights' Star Seeds. She remembered struggling through the battle with a Chaos-infused Galaxia and her own sword shattering.

The last thing she remembered clearly was holding Chibi Chibi's body to her own briefly and weeping bitter tears at causing the child Senshi's descruction with her own unwillingness to fight.

No, she remembered one more thing. She remembered her own determination that no one else she loved was going to die, not if she had any say in the matter whatsoever. She also recalled thinking that the fate of the world was never again going to depend on one person. No one should hold the fate of the planet in their hands, as she had, and nearly cause the destruction of everything, also as she had.

She was fairly certain she had managed to reach Galaxia, free her from Chaos' stranglehold on the Senshi's body and soul. If that was the case, then she had won her battle, but at a terrible price: all her friends and pseudo-family, including the Starlights. But here was Mamoru, and Galaxia had taunted her with his death early on. How was it possible? It just didn't make any sense.

"How are you here, Usako?"

"I. Don't. Know," she repeated herself, enunciating each word very carefully. "The last thing I remember in Tokyo was being completely alone."

Unconsciously, her hand hovered over the locket containing the Ginzuishou. That was the only thing that made sense once again: the Ginzuishou must have responded to her heart, to not let her be alone again.

"We came back," he whispered. "We all came back from the dead, but you were gone. We thought you and Galaxia surely must have destroyed one another or something. We _mourned_ you, Usagi. We mourned you for years. Without you, there were no more Sailor Senshi."

She shook her head. "I fought, and I think I was responsible for what happened to Chibi Chibi, and I was alone. I lost everything to the arrogant thinking that one person can change everything by not fighting. You were all dead. I'm... I'm not _that_ strong, Mamoru."

"But we came back, and you weren't there. You couldn't have waited."

"I waited. I waited for hours after Galaxia left with the other Star Seeds. I waited alone and cold and broken in a place with absolutely no sign on life. Don't say I didn't wait. But I'm not strong enough to go on without the people I love. I cannot do that, Mamoru."

He nodded briefly. "You always did fight your hardest when it was someone you loved at stake. It's been so long that I had forgotten that about you, Usako. And here I had been thinking it was my curse to never forget anything about those times. I guess I did forget something after all."

And speaking of the people she loved... She drew herself up to her full, if unimpressive, height. "I did what you asked, Mamoru. I brought back your wife. Will you let us go now?"

He turned a speculative look on her, glancing her over completely from head to toe. When he spoke this time, his voice was as cold and distant as it had been when she first walked into this room. "I suppose that depends on my wife. I was fully expecting you to be another fake, to be wiped out. Since you've managed to do what no one else has been capable of, I suppose I should leave it up to her. Darling?"

The woman on the floor stirred slightly before slowly sitting up. Just looking at her from the back, she looked tired and pale. That didn't seem to be stopping her, though. She grabbed at a blanket laying over a nearby couch, wrapping around herself like a toga, then stopped, staring down at her hand, turning it over and over in examination. Frankly, Usagi didn't see anything out of the ordinary. It looked like a perfectly normal hand to her, personally.

"Mamoru, what did you do?" And that voice was familiar too. Of course. It made sense. If she had been gone when they came back to life and Mamo-chan-no, Mamoru-had moved on without her, it wouldn't surprise her at all that it had been with Rei-chan. Well, that certainly explained why their son was a firestarter; he had to have inherited that from Rei. Of course, Rei looked older now. If anything, she looked like she was in her mid- to late-twenties, approximately the same age as her son. "What did you do, Mamoru?" She whirled to face him, completely ignoring Usagi if she even saw her at all; all her attention was focused on the old man. Before she continued berating him, she took a good look at him and gasped. "You've gotten so old, Mamoru."

"It's been a very long time, Rei," he admitted. "But you're back now so it's good. I'm glad to see you again."

"How did you do this?" The demand was more of a question now than anything else.

Idly, Usagi had to wonder if she could slip out of here without anyone being any the wiser, now that the attention was completely off of her again. It seemed feasible, especially if she went out the window instead of the door. The guards were still presumably outside the door, but the window might have been unguarded. She took an edging step towards it. She was more ready to be out of here. This was a bit too much for her to take.

She had seen a lot of weird things in her life, but this was a bit too far up there for her tastes.

"I've been trying to bring you back for years, Rei... decades, if the truth be told. But after all of that, I just had to find the perfect person to do it. Isn't that right?"

Suddenly on the spot, she froze halfway to the window, feeling a little bit like a kid with her hand in the candy jar. It probably wasn't the best analogy, but she had been most of the way to her goal when she was caught. It worked better than nothing.

Rei blinked several times, staring at her in curiosity and confusion. Of course she had not been entirely with them for the conversation on who she was and why she had left. "She looks so much like Usagi."

"She _is_ Usagi," Mamoru countered.

Rei shot him a disbelieving glare. "Usagi is dead. She has to be. We all agreed on that."

"Apparently not. Apparently she wished herself here to this time rather than wait for us."

Now that wasn't what she said. "You were all dead!" she countered. "What else was I supposed to do?"

"Wait for us to return," Mamoru returned coldly. How the years had changed him...

"I waited. I waited and waited, but there was no one. I don't even remember making the wish!"

Rei was staring at her with something between pity and anger, and it was hard to tell just which of the two were winning. Frankly, she was oddly hoping for the pity. It was selfish, perhaps, but she would rather her friend pity her than hate her. If Rei still considered her a friend after all of this...

Seeing as how she had abandoned them all those years ago, left them without their friend and, yes, without their princess, she would completely understand if Rei hated her, if Rei no longer considered her to be a friend worth having. She wasn't too certain she wouldn't feel betrayed enough to hate someone forever for that. She could forgive a lot of things, but she wasn't sure that that was one of them-so she could completely understand if Rei could never forgive her for this. The Senshi of Mars had always had a temper that burned bright and hot and fast and was slow to diminish. And she didn't even know how many years it had been.

The black haired woman crossed the room on legs that were none too steady, her eyes fixed darkly on Usagi every step of the way; of all the things she had faced today, this was the one time she had felt the urge to retreat, but she made herself stand still. Finally Rei stopped in front of her, looking her up and down. Finally, she nodded, as if she had reached some decision to herself...

...and slapped Usagi.

Only to pull her into a tight hug only seconds later, burying her face in Usagi's blonde hair. "We missed you so much, Usagi. We thought you were dead all this time. I can't believe... It's amazing. It's simply amazing. You don't look a day older than the last time I saw you."

She broke off, perhaps remembering the last day she had seen Usagi: during the final battle with Galaxia, how she and the other Inner Senshi had died early. Had anyone told her what came after that? How Haruka-san and Michiru-san had been faking all along to get close enough to Galaxia to attack her? How the Starlights had stood by her side until the end, until Galaxia killed them? Or even about Chibi Chibi?

She hoped that Rei already knew all of that. For them, it had been years and years since all of this had happened. For her, it was less than a month ago. She didn't want to drag up too many of those memories now that they were back, especially while they were still raw and painful. Chibi Usa...

But all there was for was that the future had changed. They had all rewritten their own futures, and personally, she hoped they had all had good lives. She was willing to bet that they had.

She pulled back from the hug to look Rei in the eye, her own eyes just as wet as Rei's, and glanced off to the side at Mamoru. She couldn't leave the two of them like this. If the Ginzuishou could do anything to help, she was going to do her best to make it do just that. Rei nodded, seemingly understanding her question and answering in the affirmative.

She stepped away from Rei and pulled off her locket, removing the Ginzuishou.

This time she just sent a simple wish to it: make everything all right.

The jewel of the Moon Kingdom flared bright, lighting up the entire room in its light. She could actually feel herself changing into Princess Serenity as it worked to make her wish happen.

Make everything all right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **20 August 2012**
> 
> Almost to the end... Seriously, there is one more chapter and an epilogue to go, and then _Belladonna_ is finished here on FFnet. I've very much been enjoying sharing the story. Some of the responses have been magnificent. And the hits? Seriously? Wow. You guys are so awesome.
> 
> _Of Worlds to Fall_ , my Camp NaNoWriMo story, has started being posted here on FFnet now as well. It's a fun story to write-and my beta tells me it's a very fun story to read as well. So if you get to missing _Belladonna_ , please consider giving it a read as well.
> 
> See everyone in the next chapter!  
> Apollymi


	21. Chapter Twenty

The hall was in utter chaos.

That was the only way to describe what they saw when they reached the top of the stairs. The guards he had seen surrounding Usagi earlier were now all trying to get into the door he was presuming Usagi had been taken through, all at once. There was no room for any of them to maneuver, and even if they could, it didn't look like the door was willing to budge in the least.

That door was also the source of the blinding light. It was just as well that he had been able to find his way up the stairs without opening his eyes. It had been bad enough trying to go up the stairs in the pitch-blackness; trying to go up them in light so bright he still couldn't see was twice as bad. That was to say nothing of the fact he was still half supporting Duo's weight.

Of course, once they got to the top of the stairs, Duo stepped away from him. Not by much though: no more than a step or two. He could still feel the other next to him, get a sense of his general location. But when they started moving, they were going to get separated now, since neither of them could really see anything. There was a quick and easy solution to this, though. He grabbed ahold of Duo's loose shirt, gripping it tightly. He could hear Duo chuckle faintly before the other man took hold of his hand and transferred Heero's grip, so that they were holding hands instead of tagging on one after the other.

"I guess Usagi's wherever the trouble is, right?" And that definitely sounded like the Duo he knew and... well, and knew; he wasn't too sure he was ready for anything more than that just yet. Not until it was all three of them. "Ideas on how to get in?"

He shook his head then stopped. It wasn't like Duo could see him. "Not particularly. Break in through a window?" It was how he got into the house after all, and he didn't think his skills had atrophied to the point that he wouldn't be able to determine exactly which window all this damn light was coming from.

They got across the hall to the room he had come in through quickly, pushing the door back closed again behind them. It was still too bright, but it was almost bearable, like the sun on white sand, in here. It gave him the half second he needed to glance Duo over. He looked... better. He looked _a lot_ better. Usagi must have wished something. No, it wasn't 'wishes', he corrected himself. She must have gotten the Ginzuishou to do something.

He thought he might have preferred the idea of wishes. He would take what he could get, though. If the Ginzuishou was willing to heal Duo while it was doing whatever else it was doing, all the better. He had been going to ask Usagi to heal Duo once they were clear anyway, if she didn't take the initiative herself. Knowing her as he was coming to, she probably would have taken the initiative before he could even suggest it. Actually, it looked like she already had.

He wouldn't say that Duo looked one hundred percent better just yet, but he was definitely a lot better off than he had been only a moment ago-and he was improving by the minute. His skin was a much healthier tone, the pain lines on his face were fading fast, and he was standing straighter and straighter by the second.

He certainly wasn't going to complain about that. Hell, his own minor aches and pains had faded away under the light as well, and he wasn't upset about that either. But they needed Usagi out of here, and they needed that to happen right now, before anything else could possibly go wrong.

'I'm working on making sure that doesn't happen, Heero,' Usagi's voice whispered. Completely without thinking, he whirled around, looking everywhere he could possibly see for her. She wasn't in the room. Great, was this something else she could do? 'No, not at all. It's the Ginzuishou.' And he was starting to feel like he could really hate that thing... but not too much for all its help with getting them Duo back. He could hear her. 'You have him then? Good. Is he all right? He won't say.'

And that sounded about right somehow. It wasn't the easiest thing he had ever done, but he tried to _think_ back at her, 'He's better now than he was even a minute ago. I guess we have you to thank for this?'

He got this vague sense that she shrugged. 'I'm going to make everything right again, Heero, or at least do the very best I can towards it. I might even be able to do something about the dreams, if you want, maybe even make them go away for good. If you want.'

A part of him wanted to snap out an immediate 'yes' in answer to that, but something in him hesitated. He hated the dreams; frankly, if he had to have any kind of... ability like this, why couldn't it be something useful.

'It was very useful, though, Heero. Without your dreams, we wouldn't have known where to find Duo. We could have been searching for... for... for forever.' He didn't want to add that, if he hadn't had the dreams, he never would have known she even existed, much less found her and started in this relationship with her and Duo. 'Oh, Heero...' she sighed. 'Do you want me to get rid of them?'

To his surprise, he found himself responding in the opposite way he would have thought even an hour ago. 'No, I think I want to keep them. I'm going to need some way to keep up with you two, and this at least gives me some advantage.'

Her laughter echoed through his mind; it felt warm and bright, almost like a comfortable summer's day. 'You surprise me, Heero. All right, then: the dreams stay. I'm a little relieved. But no more surprises: tell one of us at least if the dreams pertain to us. The three of us can lay out a plan.'

Now that he knew Usagi was more than capable of doing just that, he might. Though he was tempted to warn Duo ahead of time that Usagi's plans apparently tended to be heavy on the risk to herself.

'Hey!' But beneath her affront, she sounded a bit amused, so that was fine.

But what he really wanted to know was what she was doing, what was happening, and what they could do to help. So he asked her.

In response, he got brief flashes of a very old man aging backwards to become a man in his mid- to late-twenties or early thirties. There was something with a woman involved, but that was much less clear. 'The man who took us, he wanted me to bring his wife back from the dead. I did it. I'm giving him what he wants: one more lifetime with his wife.' She huffed, and while it sounded vaguely annoyed, there was actually some affection there too. 'Hopefully they'll leave me alone after this.'

'How do you mean, Usagi?'

'It's a very long story, believe me, Heero. It would take me quite a while to explain it, and really, I would rather us just all be far away from here by the time they wake back up.'

'All right. So what do you need us to do?'

She was silent for what felt like a very long moment. 'Think of the hotel, Heero. I'm going to try to take us there-or somewhere safe-but I'm not sure I'm able to move us and focus on a location as well. Think of a safe place, and I'll take us there.' She snickered briefly. 'I asked Duo, and he said he would just take us back to his apartment, so we could all sleep for a week.'

Frankly that didn't sound like a bad idea. And if Duo had a place already... But there was something else to consider. 'What about Relena's? Maybe she could help out.'

He could almost sense Usagi nodding slowly. 'That's a good idea. Hold on. Let's see if I can do this.' There was another silence then quietly, all in a rush like it was an afterthought she really didn't want Heero thinking, she added, 'And if I'm out for a while, it's probably expected. Using the Ginzuishou can be... rough.'

It sounded a lot worse than she was trying to let on. In that case, once this was over and done with, he was going to do everything in his power to make sure that there was never a need to use the Ginzuishou ever again. He was glad to have Duo back and all of them quite possibly safe, but he didn't want Usagi hurt to accomplish it.

'Oh, you can be sweet, can't you?' Her mental voice-or whatever it was-was beginning to show some strain. This was all definitely taking its toll on her. And maybe Relena's was the best idea. Usagi could stand to have one more person fussing over her right now.

Hurriedly, he slammed his eyes shut and pictured his room at Relena's mansion. It hadn't been that long since they had all been there, so it wasn't too difficult to call up all the details: the texture of the sheets, the view from the window, the way the air in the room smelled, even the exact firmness of the mattress on his bed there. Relena had designed the room with him in mind, and it showed, but it certainly did make it easier at the moment to recreate the room from memory.

The bright whiteness faded around them, dissolving into the familiar pattern of the wallpaper Relena used in most of the bedrooms in the house: a dark green and off-white damask pattern. He would recognize it anywhere.

Duo was still standing beside him. As the whiteness finally faded, Duo glanced around, apparently quickly figuring out exactly where they were and heaving a soft sigh of relief. He suddenly seemed exhausted, like he had just finished running a race and was ready to drop.

Honestly, he didn't feel much better, given his own lack of sleep over the past two nights... and not exactly _resting_ the night before that, with the two of them. Come to think of it, Duo probably hadn't had a lot of real rest since before then either. None of them were in the best of shape, not even Usagi.

Usagi...

He glanced around the room, but there was no sign of her... at least not until she appeared in front of him.

Somehow she looked... different, almost radiant. It made him think back to when he had first started dreaming of her, how his mind had thought of her as an angel. Maybe that was what she was, at least for him and Duo: their angel. And that was entirely too sappy and needed to be banished from his mind.

That dress she was wearing, the one he had come to utter despise, was different now, though. It was clean again now for starters. There was also the fact that he was fairly certain she hadn't been wearing it when she first appeared in the room, but he wasn't too certain he was quite ready to get into all of that just yet. It smacked a bit too much of magic for his mind to easily handle right now. They had their angel and their God of Death back, and that was what mattered. And there was that sentimentality again.

If she was an angel, though, she was an unconscious one. The second she appeared in the room, she glanced between him and Duo, offered a weak smile, and promptly collapsed, wilting like her strings had just been suddenly cut. Without thought, he had both arms around her before she could fall; unsurprisingly, Duo had done the same, so that between the two of them they were holding her up.

His and Duo's eyes met over her head, and Duo let out a tired but amused snort. From a certain point of view, he supposed it could almost be funny. Maybe. Perhaps. Right now, though, all he wanted to do was be sure she was okay and then sleep. Her pulse was fairly good, if a little faster than he would have strictly liked, but it was far from being in a dangerous range, so he wasn't too worried. They maneuvered her between them onto the bed. He and Duo were asleep in moments.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **23 August 2012**
> 
> And here it is: the last chapter of _Belladonna_. But there is still the epilogue left to go. I'll post it Sunday when I get home again.
> 
> The first three chapters of _Of Worlds to Fall_ are up here on FFnet. The fourth chapter will be going up tomorrow, followed by a chapter on Sunday as well. I'm currently on Thirty-Four, so I have some breathing room for posting.
> 
> As for _Belladonna_ , it has taken a few forevers to get written, but it was certainly fun. I love the Duo/Usagi/Heero pairing. And at some point, I might go back and write a bit more in the same 'verse. (Or other people can play in it too! Just send me a link to what you write!)
> 
> Anyway, see you Sunday with the epilogue! Later!  
> Apollymi


	22. Epilogue

One of Relena's servants had gotten the shock of a lifetime when she had been coming in to clean one of the spare bedrooms and discovered three people sharing the king-sized bed in it. She had even gone so far as to get Relena out of the meeting she had been in to come see.

Relena, on the hand, hadn't been too surprised to see just who had appeared in her home. Once she had heard which room was unexpectedly occupied, she had had a strong feeling that it would have been Heero. That Duo and Usagi were with him still was of no major surprise. While Heero might have been a bit renowned for disappearing, Duo was persistent about keeping up with him. It had always reassured her greatly about letting Heero out of her own sight, knowing someone else was looking out for him as well.

Perhaps two someone elses, she amended as she stood in the doorway, taking in the sight before her. They must have been exhausted, she knew, for neither Heero nor Duo to wake up through all this commotion, and she could only wonder when they had gotten in. No one had informed her of their arrival-nor apparently the rest of the staff-but that also was not surprising. She had no doubts, after all, that Heero and Duo were quite capable of breaking into her home.

The idea that they would break in to sleep, however, was a bit more troublesome to figure out. Usagi sleeping contentedly between the two of them was also a bit of a puzzler... but not that much of one. It was good to see her oldest friend had two people to take care of him, just as good as it was to see her newest friend with two people who cared just as much for her. And she just dared anyone to say anything. The names of Peacecraft and Darlian still had some weight she could throw around on their behalf if she needed to.

They were sleeping hard, so she just closed the door again and left orders with the servants-all the servants-to leave them be until they woke up on their own. Whatever they had all been through, they deserved their rest.

* * *

Heero had to say, he was a little surprised to wake up and find Duo awake already. It wasn't often that anyone was awake before him. At least Usagi hadn't beaten him awake.

"Hey," Duo greeted him quiet, presumably to keep from waking up the third person in the bed. By the look of things, a marching band could stroll through the room, playing as loudly as they possibly could, and Usagi likely still wouldn't be waking up. "How are you feeling?"

He took a brief inventory of himself and found the results vaguely startling. "I'm… good. Surprisingly good, in fact," he finally decided. And maybe it actually came out sounding more like a question than a statement, but at this point, he couldn't help it. "What about you?"

"I could sleep another day or two, but otherwise I'm all right. I'm completely confused, but I'm all right. What exactly happened? Preferably starting at the moment and everything in between."

So he found himself summarizing as best he could everything that had happened in the time Duo had been... gone. There were a couple of places that were beyond his best abilities to try to explain and some that were going to have to be left for Usagi to fill in, but he covered the bulk of the information as best he could.

Telling everything that had happened, even just to the best of his abilities, still made the entire story seem almost unbelievable. No, that wasn't entirely true: it did seem wholly unbelievable. It seemed to be miles outside of anything that should be permissible by the laws of nature and science. And yet...

"So, Usagi _is_ actually Sailor Moon? You actually mean that?" Duo's eyes were wide with barely suspended disbelief. Honestly, if he hadn't seen the things she could do, he wasn't sure he would believe himself either. Having seen what he did, he still found it all a little hard to swallow. Of course, of the entire tale, that would be what Duo chose to latch onto.

He nodded. "Ginzuishou and all." And that damn thing was something he absolutely did _not_ want to think about. It had helped get Duo back, yes, but it had nearly cost them Usagi. Worryingly, she was still unconscious, completely oblivious to the world around her. Even them gradually raising their voices above whispers had done little to budge her from sleep. He was going to give her a few more hours, but if she wasn't awake by then, he was going to try to wake her up. For his own comfort, if nothing else. He could admit that this was a bit concerning, even for her.

"It just seems to wholly impossible," Duo muttered. He wasn't sure if the other man was talking to him or himself, but the statement begged a response.

"I'm still not sure I believe it. Your fairy story turned out to be correct."

Duo was quiet a moment, clearly mulling this over, before he came up with a new question: "What about the bit with the Princess?"

He winced slightly. "I didn't get around to asking her that part." But it made sense.

The American stifled a yawn into his hand and then turned to look at the clock on the bedside table. "I have no idea when we got here, Heero, but it's almost fifteen hundred hours. It was dark when we busted out, right?"

So they had slept the better part of half a day. Well, that had been part of his plan for once they got Duo back. Of course, he hadn't planned on Usagi being completely unconscious. "It was somewhere around two in the morning, I think." It was a bit of a guess, of course, but his internal clock was generally fairly accurate.

Duo lay back down, though not before pressing a quick chaste kiss to Heero's lips. "Why don't I see if I can't persuade Relena to open up the kitchen? I think some food could do us all some good, don't you?"

Duo was already halfway to his feet before Heero stopped him with a hand on his arm. "I'll go. I need to talk to Relena anyway." And explain what it was they were doing there, as well as try to get her to have someone come check both Usagi and Duo over, for his own peace of mind if nothing else. "You stay here with Usagi."

To his relief, Duo nodded, sinking back down on the bed and curling up around Usagi's prone form again. He watched her closely for a long moment before she finally moved slightly, moving closer to the warmth of Duo's body. That was a good sign, at least. Maybe she was moving from unconsciousness into something more like real sleep.

He stared at the two of them for a long, long moment. The thought kept running through his mind about how had someone like him come to have two people like the pair of them, when he so obviously did not deserve them.

Or maybe he had it backwards. Maybe it was less they were his... and more that he was theirs.

* * *

It took Usagi another sixteen hours to wake up. During that time, he and Heero had taken turns staying in the bed with her, neither entirely willing to leave her alone. Of course, neither of them were too willing to be away from each other for long either.

It was probably just as well, then, that Heero had brought them to Relena's. This place was as secure and safe as any other building he could think of, and Relena had the money and staff to dote on them as much as she saw fit. Which she had proceeded to do once Heero had let her know they were there and awake.

Though apparently, she had checked in on them earlier. That she hadn't been utterly surprised to see them was good; that they had slept through her previous visit was troublesome. Of course, they had all been beyond exhausted-and they all knew that Relena was as far from a threat as could be possible. Hell, better than that: she was a friend. They were in short supply of those.

Relena had spent more than a little time in this room as well, probably as much as she dared set aside to do with her busy politician's life. Alternately she had spent that time either speaking with Heero over various matters or whispering to Usagi, saying things that he could not hear, even from his position right beside Usagi. It didn't really bother him too much that he wasn't a major part of Relena's visits; while the two of them were more than passably friendly, they weren't exactly the closest of pals. And it wasn't like Relena was ignoring him when she was in here.

Relena's presence gave him time enough to think over everything that had happened, both that he had been present for and that Heero had told him about. He got the feeling Heero had glossed over a few things, though it was probably more that either he wasn't present for it or thought the explanation was best suited to Usagi telling it. The whole thing seemed so terribly improbable, but if the last few weeks had taught him nothing else, he had learned that the improbable seemed to happen every day. Especially around Usagi. That was fine. As far as he was concerned, it would keep them on their toes. He could see how it would have bothered Relena, though.

As luck would have it, though, Usagi started waking up while Relena was in another meeting. This time, however, the meeting was trying to get Relena's personal physician to come check all three of them over because apparently Relena was not accepting the statement that they were fine; he halfway wondered if Heero had something to do with that.

It took Usagi a few moments to stir awake, giving him time enough to rouse Heero as well. When she finally opened bright blue eyes again, they were both right there. A tired smile tugged at her lips.

"Hey, you," he whispered. It was almost enough to make him grin, repeating the almost exact same thing he had said to Heero when they both woke up earlier. "Welcome back."

* * *

If she had ever had even the faintest of doubts about how the two men in her life felt about her, they were erased by the time she woke up. She had only vague recollections of everything that happened immediately before she used the Ginzuishou, but previous experience had taught her that it would eventually come back to her. Besides, she was starting to get used to life with a few spotty sections in her memory. Right now, at least, it wasn't a big deal.

Right now, nothing seemed like much of a big deal. She had her men on either side of her, and she felt warm and safe in their arms. Maybe it wasn't the future she had supposedly been destined to have-and maybe it wasn't even a conventional future-but it was glorious to her.

She was even willing to be poked and prodded by Relena-san's doctor. It wasn't the first time; that had been when she had first come to stay at Relena-san's home. It felt like she had a lot to thank Relena-san for, including introducing her to Duo and Heero, but she wasn't going to do that, not just yet. For the time being, she was going to enjoy lying where she was.

She had the faintest of inklings that things were not yet settled, that all the loose ends with Mamoru and Rei and their son were not yet tied off, but that was in the future. They were things she was-that _they_ were-eventually going to have to deal with. She would also need to look closer into finding out just what consequences her last request on the Ginzuishou, to make everything all right, would end up being created.

In addition to that, she also wanted to check and make sure there were no more surprises from her past that might crop up in the future to surprise them; while there was some probability that Heero would see them coming, she wanted to be sure ahead of time.

Not today, though. Today, she intended to enjoy being with the men she had come to love so quickly.

No, it definitely was not the future Queen Serenity had intended for her. It was one of her own making, made from her own heart's wish, and it was going to be wonderful. It wasn't destiny set in stone, and that might have made it all that much better.

Really, it was her future, and she intended to start living it. Just the three of them...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **26 August 2012**
> 
> And wow... It's actually done. I almost can't believe it's actually done. Okay, there is some room for more stories in the same 'verse-and I do, as always, welcome anyone's writings. All I ask is, if you decide to join in on the _Belladonna_ 'verse, link me to the story and let me add it on my site .
> 
> There's a new chapter of _Of Worlds to Fall_ going up tonight as well, so if you've enjoyed _Belladonna_ , please give it a read!
> 
> Thank all you guys so very, very much for sticking with me for this story. I know there were some seriously long hiatuses, but we've all made it through now. I think the story that ends here is actually probably better than the story it started off as, and it's thanks to your feedback.
> 
> Thanks!  
> Apollymi


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